


YOU AND 
YOUR CHURCH 



J. S. KIRTLEY 




Class 

Book 

GopigM . 



CaSEXBISHT DEPOSIT. 



YOU AND YOUR CHURCH 



YOU AND YOUR 
CHURCH 



J 9 

S. KIR' 



JAMES S/£IRTLEY, D. D. 

Author of 

That Boy of Yours," " That Young Man and Himself, 

" Twenty-six Days with Jesus " 



PHILADELPHIA 

The American Baptist Publication Society 

BOSTON CHICAGO LOS ANGELES 

KANSAS CITY TORONTO 



BXfc33 



Copyright, 19*0, by 
GILBERT N. BRINK, Secretary 

Published November, 19x0 



DEC 20 IQ20 
©CU605068 



DEDICATED 

TO 

MY CHILDREN 



FOREWORD 

I have embodied in these fifteen chapters much 
of what I have said to members of the church in 
personal conversations, in brief talks, and in more 
elaborate addresses. Many good brethren have 
urged me to put it all in book form and several 
Assemblies, Associations, Conferences, and Con- 
ventions have taken formal action requesting the 
publication of several of the addresses, especially 
the ones on the Baptist Distinctive and the Bap- 
tist Objective. The two last mentioned have been 
reconstructed and elaborated for this volume. 

It would be useless to take the space at this 
point to state the many and very vital reasons 
why every member of our churches should grasp 
all the principles, ideals, and practices of the faith 
just at this stage of the world's history. What 
is involved in being a Christian, what is involved 
in being a church-member, what is involved in 
being a Baptist — these are questions of para- 
mount concern. The greatest triumphs in the 
history of Christianity are triumphs in which 
Baptists have participated as no other body of 



Foreword 



Christians has ; but far greater triumphs await us 
if we are as wise in the coming day and genera- 
tion as we have been in the past. 

I have what seems a reasonable hope, that many 
members of our churches in the United States 
and Canada will read this effort to answer the 
questions mentioned above, and that many pas- 
tors and other leaders will find it a suitable text- 
book for classes in the study of these essentials 
in the religion of today and of the coming day. 



CONTENTS 

PART I 

Chapter A CHURCH-MEMBER Page 

I. Becoming a Christian 3 

II. Joining the Church 11 

PART II 

What You Found in the Church 

I. Another Ceremony 29 

II. A Brotherhood 36 

III. An Organism 42 

IV. Accumulated Treasures 52 

V. The Great Distinctive 56 

VI. The Great Objective. 94 

VII. Instrumentalities and Agencies . . 116 

PART III 

Your Part 

I. What You Are to Do 123 

II. The Powers with Which You 

Work 131 

III. The Power from Above. . . . 142 

IV. How to Get that Power 147 

V. Some Things that Help 161 

VI. Difficulties and Encouragements. 168 



PART I 
A CHURCH-MEMBER 



BECOMING A CHRISTIAN 

You are now a Christian, a follower of Christ; 
but you were not always so. You were born in- 
nocent of any sin, but with inherent possibilities 
of sinning and with inherent possibilities of be- 
coming a Christian. And you became a Christian. 

1. How? 

I. It came about in the same way in which all 
the millions of Christians of the present and of 
the past became such : through a personal choice 
of Christ, made by yourself and for yourself, not 
made by some one else for you, but by you alone. 
Others may have chosen him for you and urged 
him upon you, may have helped you to under- 
stand, resolve, and act, but not till you chose him 
for yourself did you become a Christian. 

Perhaps you had special help from the home. 
You may have been brought up so well, with 
Christ so dominant over the thoughts and ideals 
and interests and atmosphere of the home, that 
you fell under his influence without resistance or 
effort or hesitation or fear. You fell in with the 
ways of the home-makers as if they were your 
own from the beginning. Almost unconsciously 
you adopted their habits. You took over their 
religion by the instinct of imitation with which 

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You and Your Church 



you had been endowed by nature. But there 
came a time when you felt that Christ must be 
the direct source of your own life as well as of 
theirs, and you made him your Saviour and Mas- 
ter as he was theirs, by the same sort of choice 
that they had once made. Then you began to 
form your own habits apart from theirs, dealing 
personally and directly with God through Christ, 
though still under the influence of those to whom 
you owed so much and still full of appreciation 
of them. You had felt your own need of him. 
There was no radical change in your life because 
there was so little to be changed. Your habits 
were right, there had been no development of any 
bad possibilities within you; but now Christ was 
at the center, and you would grow like him in- 
stead of growing like your parents. You have 
made this choice so early in life that you can say, 
as I have heard so many say, that you cannot re- 
member the time when you were not a Christian. 
Perhaps young Timothy is a case in point. (Acts 
16 : 1-3.) Your sense of sinfulness was not so 
acute at the first as it has since grown, for you 
will be discovering all the time how weak and 
liable you are to commit sin, sin of the thought 
or imagination or feeling or act. 

On the other hand, you may have grown up in 
an environment in which you were not made to 
think of Christ in a personal way, and you grew 
in the wrong direction, whether you went into a 
life of much sinning or not, and, when the sense 
of need seized you, it was a very pungent sense 



[4] 



Becoming a Christian 



of sinfulness and lostness. You recall the struggle 
you had with yourself before you could yield 
your will to his, or the way you groped about 
searching for him, crying to him to have mercy 
on you, when you did not know that his heart 
was even then overflowing with mercy and that 
he was trying to get your attention centered on 
his mercy and his strength so that he could save 
you. You can never tell how glad you were when 
you looked and lived and felt the sense of pardon 
and cleansing. You experienced what is told in 
John 3 : 14-18. 

Or, possibly you are one of those who have 
gone deeply into sin, and you had an awakening 
which threw you into agony till at last Jesus 
spoke to your troubled soul, as he spoke to the 
waves of the sea, and said, " Peace, be still." It 
was like going from a cemetery into a banquet 
hall, from Cimmerian darkness into a land of 
rainbows. It had some elements like the ex- 
perience of Saul of Tarsus (Acts 9) or of the 
Philippian jailer. (Acts 16 : 19-34.) 

You may even have gone so far as to commit 
some sin which humanity pronounces incurable, 
a sin with which only the stern laws of man can 
deal. There are many people in trouble to whom 
there is absolutely no way out but through the 
door of Christ's forgiving and cleansing and in- 
spiring heart, and the laws of nature and of man 
must simply take their course. Such are the 
libertine, the murderer, the dope-fiend, the thief. 
I have in mind some men and even women who 



[5] 



You and Your Church 



were blackened by the most revolting sins and 
even crimes, who are now rejoicing in a Saviour's 
redeeming work. The scars will mark them for- 
ever, but they will also mark them as brands 
snatched from the burning. Take the case of 
the robber crucified with Jesus. (Luke 23 : 39- 
43.) Take the case of some eminent workers 
all over the country. Read again Paul's list of 
the signs of depravity in 1 Corinthians, chapter 
6, and hear him say : " And such were some of 
you ; but ye were washed, but ye were sanctified, 
but ye were justified in the name of the Lord 
Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God.' , 

The point is that, whichever class you belonged 
to, you became a Christian in the same way that 
every other one followed, and that was by a 
choice of Christ which brought him with his 
transforming and directing grace into your heart. 
You made the choice, whether quietly, as did 
Lydia and the Ethiopian treasurer and millions 
more, or amid upheaval and agony, as did Saul 
and the jailer and millions of others. 

2. Yet you became a Christian in a way dif- 
ferent from that of any other one that ever lived, 
for the simple reason that you are different from 
anybody else in the world, different from any one 
that ever did or ever will live, different in tem- 
perament, training, outlook, stage of experience, 
ways of feeling, thinking, and doing. Sometimes 
inquirers think they must become Christians just 
as other Christians say they did, even to the very 
circumstances and all the emotions. My own 

[6] 



Becoming a Christian 



conversion at the age of sixteen was very vivid, 
with intense sense of need and with great joy- 
when at last I apprehended Christ as my loving 
Saviour. A cousin of mine made the choice so 
early that she was not at all aware, at the time, of 
the vast significance of that choice, not aware of 
much difference after her acceptance of Christ. 
But the new life began at that point. 

Then let me say again, that the two essentials 
in your becoming a Christian are, first, a sense 
of need, and, secondly, a reliance on Christ as 
Saviour, Teacher, Master, Guide, Friend; not 
trust for salvation in parents or teacher or minis- 
ter or church, though you did not lack confidence 
in them, but confidence in Christ to do for you 
and with you what none of the others nor all 
combined could do. When you took him as your 
Saviour it was through that action of the soul 
which we call faith, trust, confidence, belief, and 
we sometimes illustrate it by the physical senses 
of touch, sight, taste, and the like. The sense 
of need we call conviction; the change of attitude 
toward sin we call repentance ; the turning to him 
with reliance we call faith — all just as simple as 
it could be. 

Your conversion was just like all others in the 
essentials, but unlike all others just as you are 
unlike other people. 

2. Agencies 

Perhaps I should say the " instruments and 
agencies " that led you to make that choice. It 

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You and Your Church 



is important to go over them for reasons that 
must be at once quite obvious. It will guide 
you in your attitude toward those agencies, and 
it will enable you to employ them in the interest 
of others. 

Perhaps it was example, the example of some 
one who made you feel that you must be just 
such a Christian as that person, and you saw 
clearly that Jesus was the source of his life and 
must become the source of your goodness. 

Or it may be that some one who knew your 
need made a distinct and purposed appeal to you 
that God used in awakening in you a sense of 
that need, till you saw that you were " without 
hope and without God in the world." 

Or it may have come simply from reading 
some awakening passage of the Bible that gripped 
you and held you till you could yield to Christ. 
(Such as John 3 : 16; Matt. 11 : 28-30; Acts 
17 : 30, 31 ; Rom. 5 : 1-11 ; 2 Cor. 5 : 10.) 

Perhaps it was a sermon you heard, like the 
words which reached Tom Nowell's ears from 
the old sailors' chaplain, whom he had heard 
many a time, and had scorned, but now stopped 
and listened to him for a moment as he was speak- 
ing on the street corner in Seattle and telling the 
delinquents before him that if they would kneel 
down and honestly ask God to do what was 
possible for them, there was hope for every one 
of them. Tom reached a sudden determination 
and, hastening back to the opium-joint in which 
he had been lying for days in a cocaine stupor, 

[8] 



Becoming a Christian 



he kneeled down and put himself in God's hands 
and rose a new man. 

It may have been the thought of another's 
doom, as was the case with Adoniram Judson. 
He had graduated at Brown University, but he 
was not a Christian. He was traveling through 
the country, and stopped for the night at an inn. 
During the night he heard the moaning of a sick 
man in an adjoining room and, on inquiring, 
learned that it was an old University friend of 
his who was dying. Judson exclaimed, " Dying 
and lost!" That was the thought which awak- 
ened him and led him to seek his Saviour. 

Or there may have been some special view of 
the Christ whose heart was made to suffer be- 
cause of your sins, as Saul of Tarsus caught a 
vision of Christ and heard him say, " Why per- 
secutest thou me ? " 

But whatever the means by which it was done, 
your acceptance of Christ was brought about 
by the Spirit of God, who used the means to 
gain your attention and fix it on Christ, "the 
Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the 
world," just as he is now using you and your 
efforts and your influence to get the attention of 
others who need Christ as you did. It is the 
Spirit who convicted you of sins. (John 16 : 8- 
ii.) It is he who gave you rebirth in Christ. 

Now you are a Christian, leading the most 
blessed life ever known or dreamed of, whether 
you are aware of all its blessedness or not, 
whether you are realizing all of its possibilities 

[9] 



You and Your Church 



or not. Here are some passages of Scripture 
which tell you some important things about the 
life you are living: Matthew 5 : 3-1 1; 13; 
Romans 4 : 6-8; 2 Corinthians 4 : 6; 1 John 5 : 
2; Revelation 21 to 22; Proverbs 4 : 18, 19. 



[10] 



II 

JOINING THE CHURCH 

I. Why You Did It 

There was just one reason : you chose to do so. 
You had help in making that choice, but no one 
compelled you to make it. 

There are three reasons why you made the 
choice : 

1. You Wanted To 

Something within you prompted you. The 
very thing you wanted to do was to join the 
church. Even if no one had suggested it, you 
would have thought of it yourself, and if there 
had been no church to join, you would have won- 
dered why there was not and would have been 
inclined to originate something of the sort your- 
self. 

(i) It was an instinct of the new Christian 
nature to want to be associated with the rest of 
the followers of Christ because they and you 
were alike, had passed through the same experi- 
ence, had the same interests, sustained the same 
relation to Christ. You were born into the house- 
hold of faith when you were born again. " Birds 
of a feather flock together " — it was something 
like that. 

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You and Your Church 



(2) There was a new tie binding you to them, 
the ligament of life, the new life in Christ. You 
felt the pull of it and have been feeling it ever 
since. It worked, whether you were conscious 
of it or not, whether you were working or rest- 
ing or eating or thinking. 

(3) There was born a new ambition in your 
soul, the ambition to impart what you had, even 
your innermost experience, an instinct to share 
all that you had, to pass it on as designed for 
others all the more because it had blessed you, 
as Paul wrote to the Romans, " I long to see you, 
that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift " 
(Rom. 1 : 11). That ambition was correlated 
to that which became the new law of your life, 
the law of service, 

(4) You found a new motive in your heart, 
the motive of love. Love always corresponds to 
relationships, and there is a love exactly suited to 
any relationship into which you were born or 
may establish yourself. There is never any con- 
flict between the different kinds of love when 
the relationships are rightly established and 
maintained; in fact, they intensify each other. 
You love your father all the more for loving 
your husband or wife or child or brother or 
sister or neighbor. 

But here is a new variety of love, the love of 
Christians for each other, just as the love of 
brothers and sisters and all the rest is rudimen- 
tary in us when we are born into this life. This 
love is born in us when we are " born again." 

[12] 



Joining the Church 



Of course, it must be cultivated and will suffer 
from neglect, but it is there at the start of the 
Christian life. It is called " love of the brethren/' 
" brotherly love," and " Christian love." In ac- 
cepting Christ you accepted all whom he had 
accepted. In coming into your heart he brought 
in all his friends with him. He brought that 
new love from heaven with him, and he trans- 
plants it into our hearts. A new variety of car- 
nation was produced some years ago and a rich 
man in the East is said to have paid thirty thou- 
sand dollars for it. This new love added to all 
the other varieties is priceless. Paul speaks of it 
when he writes to the Thessalonians : " For, as 
concerning love of the brethren, ye have no need 
that one write unto you; for ye yourselves are 
taught of God to love one another" (i Thess. 
4:9). As a suitable love for the natural brother 
is born in you, so this love for the Christian 
brother is implanted in you when you are born 
again. It prompted you to join the church where 
the others were. 

(5) Gratitude also prompted you to seek the 
church and Christian people. It was through 
them you had been brought to Christ — through 
the work and worship and efforts of their church, 
their prayers for you, their influence over you, 
their instructions. You felt that the church as 
a whole, as well as definite individuals, had had 
some part in leading you to the great decision. 
You wanted to show your gratitude by telling 
them so, by being with them, by doing something 

[13] 



You and Your Church 



for them, and by helping them do for others 
what they had done for you. 

(6) Self-interest of an unselfish sort led you 
to seek the church. You felt your need of other 
Christians. Their fellowship and friendship 
would strengthen and safeguard you ; your heart 
would find rest among them; your judgment 
would be confirmed in its convictions by them; 
your spiritual needs required a home and a home 
love — a thing you felt very keenly, even before 
you tried to understand the full meaning of the 
hunger you had for this company and companion- 
ship. 

Some of the members did not attract you by 
their natural gifts or their attainments ; but there 
was one respect in which they all seemed attrac- 
tive : they all belonged to Christ, they represented 
Christ, even though they may not have done so 
with satisfaction to you or to themselves. 

2. The People in the Church Wanted You to Join 

(i) They had the same interest in you that 
you had in them. They wanted you with them 
as much as you wanted to be with them. 

(2) You were, in a true sense, the child of the 
church, and they had that sort of love for you. 
They wanted to do still more for you, and they 
knew they could not do very much for you while 
you were on the outside. 

(3) They knew from experience what you 
needed and knew far better than you did what 
you would lose if you failed to join them. 

[14] 



Joining the Church 



(4) They had a desire for self-preservation, 
which increased their desire to have you come in, 
for they knew that, if those whom they led to 
Christ did not join, the church would soon cease 
to exist, and there would be no more cooperative 
effort for the salvation of others from sins. 

(5) They needed you and knew it, felt it, 
needed you to help them win others to Christ. It 
is a delight to them to have new coworkers in 
that blessed enterprise. 

(6) The bond that bound them to you, the 
bond of the new life in Christ, was felt just as 
keenly by them as by you; the law of the new 
life in Christ, the law of service, is the law under 
which they think of you and they would serve 
you; the motive of the new life, the motive of 
love, is one they feel keenly and constantly. The 
church would atmosphere and motivate your life. 

3. Christ Wanted You to Join 

(1) He knew that your nature required that 
you get into the group with the rest of the dis- 
ciples. He knew that, with your inclination to 
get with them and their inclination to have you 
with them, there would be a getting together any- 
how and that, unless he took charge of it, there 
would be serious blunders. He arranged for it in 
the very best possible way. 

(2) He knew how important it is that you 
confess him, and he planned it so that you could 
do so in the most effective manner. There is a 
value in confessing him. He knew all about that, 

[15] 



You and Your Church 



and he would not let you miss it. In confessing 
him you had your experience of him made more 
vivid and enduring, you brightened the experi- 
ences of others, and you made a direct appeal to 
those who were not then Christians. It tested 
your fidelity to him and was your testimony to 
his power. It gratified Christ and made it pos- 
sible for him to confess you in the presence of 
his Father and the holy angels. (Matt. 10 : 

32,33-) 

(3) He knew how important it was that you 
be properly classified. There is a chapter in 
Drummond's " Natural Law in the Spiritual 
World " on the subject of the significance of 
classification that everybody should read. In be- 
ing classified with your own people, you are re- 
enforced with what they have, you are protected 
with their strength, you are at once a preacher, 
using their voice. Confession crystallizes the 
sentiments; classification with other Christians 
socializes them. 

(4) He wanted to see you cared for. Not till 
children may grow up just as well outside as 
inside the family and the home will it ever be 
possible for Christians to be just as good outside 
the church as inside. Flowers may grow along 
the roadside and still be flowers, but they do a 
great deal better in a well-cultivated garden. No 
one wants to ask the question whether he can 
live a Christian life without confessing Christ 
and becoming classified with his people, but you 
simply ask, What does Christ think about it and 

[16] 



Joining the Church 



what does he wish? There is a sense in which 
the church is a home and a school and a hospital, 
but the purpose is to make home-makers and 
teachers and soldiers out of those who enter. 

(5) He wanted you to be made one with the 
others, socialized, brigaded with them, to use one 
of our military terms. He is building a body 
out of the total of his disciples. There are three 
striking symbols of that body. One is the human 
body. He is the head, and we are the members. 
The head does the thinking and directs the ac- 
tivities of the body, using the members as it will, 
but it depends on the body to execute its thoughts 
and plans. Another figure is that of the vine 
and its branches. The vine is the source of life 
and fruitfulness to the branches, all the vitality 
and all the material for leaves and fruit coming 
up from the roots through the trunk line ; but the 
vine is dependent on the branches to manifest that 
life and bear the fruit. A third impressive figure 
is that of a building and its foundation or corner- 
stone. Christ is the foundation of faith and life, 
" and other foundation can no man lay," but the 
stones laid on it are similar to it, are " living 
stones," and all together they " grow into a liv- 
ing temple," " a spiritual house." 

In thus unifying you with others he has done 
these two things for you: (a) he has been indi- 
vidualizing you, has made you more yourself 
than if you had been allowed to " run wild " out 
in the world. A hand is not less a hand because 
it is a part of the whole body, but rather is made 

[17] 



You and Your Church 



more distinctive by being one of many members 
of the same body. Its functions have been set 
off against those of the foot and the ear and the 
eye. If there were no foot the hand would try 
to be a foot too, and that is never a very suc- 
cessful way of utilizing the hand. Your own 
traits and activities are delimited by association 
with others, and your individuality is developed 
as it could not be if you were alone. 

(b) He has been socialising you. That is, he 
makes you part of the body. It is a hand work- 
ing with foot and ear and eye and nose. The 
result is that he reenforces you with all the other 
members and reenforces them with you. The 
strength of the hand is imparted to all the other 
members either in its structural relations with 
them or in the ministry it seeks to render to them. 
Responsibilities make you both more yourself 
and more theirs. 

As a result of that socialization your life func- 
tions in new ways, achieves new products. One 
function is that of united prayer. Jesus knew 
what was possible in that line, for he says : " If 
two of you shall agree on earth as touching any- 
thing which they shall ask, it shall be done for 
them by my Father who is in heaven. For 
where two or three are gathered together in my 
name, there am I in the midst of them " (Matt. 
18 : 19, 20). In Acts 2 and 3 we see how this 
common and persistent prayer together preceded 
and prepared for the coming of the Spirit on the 
Day of Pentecost. 

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Joining the Church 



Worship becomes a new thing, a composite of 
the adoration of many souls. Your walk with 
them is a march, a drill, a social advance upward. 
Your work is your own part of the common task 
that blends the spirits of the workers in the prod- 
uct. It is a united attack on sin and a united 
building of the structure of society. You de- 
velop the possibilities of a nature that has the 
multitudinous element in it. 

The result within you is the development of the 
three great elemental Christian impulses, love of 
the brethren, obedience to Christ, and the spirit 
of serving. 

The method by which he had you make that 
confession was in itself designed by him to pre- 
serve the experiences of the soul and proclaim 
them, thereby intensifying and imparting them. 
Of course there was a ceremony. We are so 
constituted that some sort of formula is needed 
as a means of symbolizing something and com- 
mitting us to something. The greatest event in 
the history of the world was the death and resur- 
rection of Jesus; the greatest experience you 
ever had was your experience in choosing him 
as your Saviour and Teacher and Master, and 
thereby dying to the past and rising to the future ; 
the greatest hope you cherish for the future is 
that of the resurrection of the body. Well, Jesus 
put all three of these into a symbol that met you 
at the door of the church. The purpose of bap- 
tism was to set forth in a symbol those three ex- 
periences of resurrection. Jesus was wondrously 

[19] 



You and Your Church 



wise in arranging it so. You preached the gospel, 
saying in a living tableau, " This is what saved 
me, the death and resurrection of Christ." You 
told your experience in the same way, as you 
said, without a spoken word, " This is how it 
saved me, by my death to the past with its sins 
and my resurrection to the future with its sal- 
vation.' ' You also proclaimed your hope of a 
future resurrection of the body in that same way. 
(Rom. 6 : 3-5.) 

Jesus arranged all of that with a view to giving 
you pleasure, impressing all who saw it that he 
died for our sins and rose for our justification, 
and that we may die to sin and rise to a new life. 
So we see that the ceremony at the church door 
did not destroy anything that was in your ex- 
perience, but expressed and confirmed and en- 
larged it all. 

We can imagine his joy in seeing you confess 
him. 

II. How You Joined 

You will recall three things : 

1. Your Confession 

It was your confession, not of yourself, but 
of your Saviour; not of your goodness, but of 
his; not of your faith, but of the Saviour in 
whom your faith rested; not of your purposes, 
but of the Saviour whom you purposed to love 
and trust and serve. You confessed him as a 
Saviour whom you actually trusted for salvation, 



[20] 



Joining the Church 



for teaching, for guidance. You became a Chris- 
tian when you made the inner decision to accept 
Christ. The will acted on the matter. That 
settled it. Then you confessed Christ. 

You may have had much emotion and you may 
have had very little. That is a matter of tem- 
perament, or experience, or circumstances, or all 
combined. Many people take that decision 
quietly, like Lydia, " whose heart the Lord 
opened, that she attended unto the things which 
were spoken by Paul " (Acts 16 : 14) — whose 
heart the Lord opened like a flower as the sun 
calls it to awake — or like the Ethiopian treasurer 
who leaned upon Jesus and took his hand and 
was saved. Others are awakened with a storm of 
sorrow, like the jailer at Philippi (Acts 16), or 
like Paul himself on that mad, wild ride to 
Damascus. (Acts 9. ) 

All you needed in joining the church was to 
give evidence that you had actually accepted 
Christ and intended to live as his follower — just 
that, nothing more. The rest would come in the 
path of duty and service. You did not join the 
church to become a Christian, but to lead a Chris- 
tian life. It was not through the church to 
Christ, but through Christ into the church. 

2. Your Acceptance by the Church for Member- 
ship 

In some churches they ask candidates for mem- 
bership to meet the deacons, or a standing com- 
mittee, who make some private investigation and 

[21] 



You and Your Church 



then bring the case before the church in a public 
way. In other churches the habit is to invite the 
candidate to come before the whole church in the 
first instance and make the statement in public. 
The vote of the church settles the matter, in 
either case. 

3. Your Baptism 

In your careless days you may have thought 
of baptism as a singular, almost grotesque thing, 
about which people could make humorous re- 
marks quite easily. But, when you came to be 
baptized, it was a most unique experience. It 
did not save you or give you the consciousness of 
being a Christian — it could not; but it did give 
you the consciousness of having done your Mas- * 
ter's will so far. It told in a living tableau what 
did save you and how it saved you and what you 
hoped for in the future. Jesus was wonderfully 
wise in giving us only two ordinances and in put- 
ting into those ordinances as in a mold the whole 
content of the gospel. 

At this point it may be well to say something 
about the form of baptism. I have taken its 
real form for granted in all my allusions to it up 
to this point and, in the chapter on The Great 
Distinctive, I give the historical story of the way 
the form came to be changed. 

If you were asked, What is the form of bap- 
tism? you could answer that there is only one 
way to find out: Go to the dictionary as you 
would in looking up any other word. In this 

[22] 



Joining the Church 



case you would have to go to the Greek diction- 
ary, as the words " baptize " and " baptism " are 
not English words. They were baptizo and bap- 
tisma in Greek, one the verb telling the doing, 
and the other the noun telling what is done. 
These words were not translated into our lan- 
guage, they were only transferred and their final 
syllables adapted to our language. When we 
go, then, to the various Greek dictionaries, or 
lexicons, as they are called, we find that the 
twenty odd dictionaries are perfectly agreed in 
saying that the verb baptize means to dip, to 
plunge, to overwhelm, to immerse. They also say 
that there is a distinct verb for sprinkle, rantizo; 
also one for pour, ekcheo; and that their meanings 
are always separate. For this ordinance which 
we call baptism, of course there is only the one 
word used. That is the reason we always say 
baptism. If the word for sprinking, or pouring, 
was ever used when reference was made to the 
ordinance, we could not take it over into our lan- 
guage by the term baptism, but would have to say 
rantism or use the word for pour. 

That strictly settles the matter. But there are 
several subsidiary ways of confirming the find- 
ings of the dictionaries. 

In support of the meaning of the words bap- 
tizo and baptisma — " baptize " and " baptism," as 
we say in English — you have only to note the 
circumstances connected with the administration 
of the ordinance. John was baptizing, and the 
people came to him, and " they were baptized by 

[23] 



You and Your Church 



him in the river Jordan " (Matt. 3:6). " Jesus 
came from Nazareth, and was baptized of John 
in the Jordan. And straightway coming up out 
of the water" (Mark 1 : 9, 10). "And John 
also was baptizing in JEnon, near to Salim, be- 
cause there was much water there " (John 3 : 
23). The Ethiopian treasurer " went down into 
the water " and " came up out of the water " 
(Acts 8 : 38, 39). 

Another confirmation is found in the signifi- 
cance of the ordinance itself as a symbol. I have 
already spoken of what it was given for and its 
symbolic character. Read Romans 6 : 3-5 about 
being " buried with him by baptism into death." 

In his " Spirit of Christianity " Hegel thus re- 
fers to baptism : " John's custom of immersing 
his disciples in water was an important symbol. 
There is no feeling so homogeneous to the desire 
for the infinite as the desire to be buried in water. 
The one who plunges in faces a foreign element 
that at once completely surrounds him and makes 
itself felt at every point of his body. He has 
only felt water, that touches him where he is, and 
he is only where he feels it. There is no hole in 
the water, no limitation, no variety or definite-] 
ness. The feeling of it is the most unscattered 
and simple. The immersed person comes out into 
the light, separates himself from the water, is 
divided from it and yet drips from it all around. 
As it leaves him the world takes on form again, 
and he steps back strengthened into the manifold 
state of consciousness again. While he was im- 



24] 



Joining the Church 



mersed he had but one feeling ; the world was for- 
gotten, and he was in a solitude that had cast 
everything away, unwound itself from every- 
thing. Baptism was a getting out of the past, and 
an enthusiastic consecration to a new world." 

Still another is the practice of the early Chris- 
tians and the curious way in which sprinkling 
and pouring came to be adopted as substitutes. 
A full account of that is given in the chapter on 
The Great Distinctive. Ancient art preserves the 
evidence in the old baptisteries. 

While these several confirmations of the real 
form of baptism are interesting and pleasing, 
they are really not required. The meaning of the 
word is established by the dictionaries so fully 
that no competent scholar claims that sprinkling 
and pouring are anything but substitutes for real 
baptism, though many seek to justify the con- 
tinued use of the substitutes. The grounds on 
which they do so are wholly at variance with 
true reasoning and, if the matter were not so seri- 
ous, they would often be ludicrous in the extreme. 



25] 



PART II 

WHAT YOU FOUND IN THE 
CHURCH 



I 

ANOTHER CEREMONY 

The Lord's Supper 

1. What It Is 

It is a supper of br^d and wine, to be eaten 
by the disciples at intervals. It is not a full meal 
or an effort to gratify hunger and thirst. In fact, 
it is not needed for physical strength or refresh- 
ing, but for the good of the soul. A pinch of 
the bread and a sip of the wine are enough. 

2. What It Means 

Bread stands fas the type of all kinds of food, 
and the juice of the grape is representative of 
all invigorating beverages. The two, then, are 
symbols of what sustains the soul. The real Sus- 
tainer of the soul is Christ. Long before he es- 
tablished the ordinance he told the people that. 
He said : " I am the bread which came down out 
of heaven " ; "I am the bread of life " ; " your 
fathers ate manna in the wilderness and died. 
This is the bread which cometh down out of 
heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. 
I am the living bread which came down out of 
heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall 
live forever " (John 6 : 41-51). He is also the 

[29] 



You and Your Church 



living water. To the woman at the well he said, 
"If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is 
that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou 
wouldest have asked of him, and he would have 
given thee living water" (John 4 : 10). "If 
any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink " 
(John 7 : 37). The bread and the wine are the 
two symbols of his life, and together they give 
the complete idea of him as the one source and 
sustenance of our life. As we partake of them 
in a physical way, so we partake of him in a 
spiritual way. 

But the bread must be broken and the wine 
poured out before they can be taken into the sys- 
tem. So his body has been broken by the ham- 
mer of hate and his veins have been opened that 
his life might be given up as well as given out for 
us, then given to us, then reproduced in us. 

There is a close connection between these two 
ceremonies, baptism and the Supper. The two 
complete one great idea. Baptism symbolizes the 
emergence of the soul into new life in Christ; 
the Supper symbolizes the feeding of that new 
life on him, the " hidden manna," the " bread 
of heaven." As birth takes place only once and 
is followed by frequently taking what nourishes 
life, so baptism comes once for all, while the 
Supper comes at intervals to signify that the life 
must be constantly nourished. " As oft as ye eat 
this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show forth 
the Lord's death till he come." We shall keep it 
up " till he comes." 

[30] 



Another Ceremony 



3. How Observe It 

Paul says we must do it "worthily." That 
does not raise the question of whether you are 
worthy either of the gift of life or of the ordi- 
nance which symbolizes his care of that life by the 
gift and impartation of himself, for you are not 
worthy and never will consider yourself worthy, 
yet you will strive to become worthy. But the 
way you observe this Supper may be an entirely 
worthy or unworthy way. The Corinthians did 
it very unworthily, because they thought of it as 
a regular feast to which they could come and 
eat all the bread they wanted and drink all the 
wine they could get hold of. So Paul tells them 
to " examine yourselves " and see that you have 
the right idea about it. The " worthy " way is 
to discern the symbol within the substance, eat 
and drink knowing what it is for, and respond to 
its meaning. 

4. Wrong Views 

There have been wrong views developed. Of 
course. That's the way we have done with al- 
most everything God has given us. What gift 
of his have we not perverted both in our views 
and in our use of it? 

One wrong view is that the bread and the wine, 
under the invocation of the one who administers 
it, becomes the veritable, actual body and blood 
of Christ. How this perversion came about will 
be discussed more fully in the chapter on The 

[31] 



You and Your Church 



Great Distinctive. Both baptism and the Sup- 
per came to be regarded as saving rather than 
symbolic ordinances. Heathen who came into 
the church in the very early days brought that 
idea, and they also brought the idea of a sacred 
order called priests, who were necessary in admin- 
istering the ordinances and gave to them a magi- 
cal power. This is the teaching of the Roman 
Catholic Church, and they call it transubstantia- 
tion. That is, the substance is changed, under the 
blessing of the priest, into the actual body and 
blood of Christ. That is the chief reason why 
the priest drinks the wine, for it would not do 
to spill a single drop of it, as might happen in 
passing it around among the people, while the 
people eat the bread because there is not so much 
danger of losing any of it. 

When Jesus said of the broken bread, " This is 
my body," and of the wine, " This is my blood, 
which is shed for many, for the remission of 
sins," he used a very familiar figure of speech 
which we call a metaphor. If he had said, " This 
is like my body," etc., it would have been a 
simile, which is an expanded metaphor. But the 
metaphor is an implied or unexpanded simile and 
means exactly the same as if it had been ex- 
panded. 

There is another view called consubstantiation. 
This was the view of Luther, who denied that the 
bread and wine were changed into the veritable 
body and blood of Jesus, but affirmed that his 
" real presence " was there " in, with, and under 

[32] 



Another Ceremony 



the bread and wine," and that it was a means 
of grace because you actually partook of him. 
When told that Christ was only at the right hand 
of God, he replied that the right hand of God 
was anywhere and everywhere. 

John Calvin modified that view somewhat by 
saying that, while the bread and wine are signs 
of the body and blood of Christ, they are the in- 
strumental means of his presence, and the Supper 
is therefore a means of grace. 

Zwingli was nearer the true view in saying 
that the Supper is a memorial or remembrance 
of the sacrifice offered once for all by Christ, and 
that it is not a continuance or repetition of the 
original sacrifice of Christ, as taught by the 
Roman Church, and by Luther and Calvin in a 
modified way, also by some others. 

Thus we see that what is known as sacramen- 
talism changes the two ordinances to be some- 
thing entirely different from what Christ de- 
signed them to be. That view is held by the 
Church of England as well as by the other 
churches referred to. Sacramentalism is usually 
wrapped up in what is known as sacerdotalism, 
the existence of a sacred order in whom the 
church really centers, so that the institution and 
the official are so necessary to Chritianity that it 
cannot exist apart from them. Everything is 
created by the successors of the apostles, and the 
ordinances are the channels through which God's 
grace flows to the people ; the bishop is the succes- 
sor of the apostles ; the priest is ordained by him ; 



33 



You and Your Church 



without the priest there cannot be full worship 
of God; the sacraments, baptism, and the Lord's 
Supper, are the means that must create and main- 
tain the spiritual life. Baptism is " the great 
sacrament of our regeneration," and the Supper, 
or Eucharist as it is termed, " our chief means 
of communion with our Lord." As R. J. Camp- 
bell puts it, " The incarnation, the atonement, the 
extension of both in the sacraments, the ministry 
which guards them, and the visible society itself 
as the sphere of sacrificial grace — all these seem 
to me to imply each other." 

All of which is foreign to the simplicity of 
the gospel. The ordinances are not sacraments in 
any such sense. They cannot save. They can- 
not constitute a channel through which the grace 
of God is extended to us. Such an idea shock- 
ingly " limits the universality of divine grace," 
as Doctor Fairbairn points out, and conditions 
the grace by imperfect men. 

In order to observe the Supper properly you 
should prepare for it. You do that by mentally 
seeing the fact that Christ died for you, and this 
vivid object-lesson of our sustenance by him is 
only a dull hint of the glory that is in the actual 
experience. The object-lesson keeps the. truth 
clear in the mind, appeals to the heart for its 
gratitude and devotion, and stimulates the reso- 
lution to become more worthy of it all. 

You prepare for it by your experience in living 
by him and doing his will. That stimulates the 
hunger and the thirst of the soul and gives a more 

[34] 



Another Ceremony 



vivid sense of the truths set forth in the symbol. 

In many of our churches a covenant-meeting 
is held at the prayer-meeting preceding the ob- 
servance of the Supper, and at such a meeting the 
thoughts turn toward the essential idea in the 
Supper. That is a good preparation. 

Regularity in attending is the best sort of prep- 
aration, If it should be impossible to attend but 
one meeting in the month, let it be the Com- 
munion service. 



[35] 



II 

A BROTHERHOOD 

On joining the church, you found yourself in 
the midst of a brotherhood and an actual member 
of it. 

That meant three things: 

1. Kinship 

All the members were your spiritual kin in 
Christ, unless, as may sometimes be the case, 
there was one, here and there, who had not really 
been born again. With such possible exceptions, 
you had all been reborn, " not of blood, nor of 
the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but 
of God " (John i : 13). The source of that new 
life is God, the agent of it is the life-giving Spirit 
of God, and the type after which you were reborn 
is Jesus the Elder Brother. You found a family, 
and you became at once and without any further 
conditions as much a member of that family as 
the oldest and most honored son or daughter. 
Potential childship to God had become actual 
through your vital union with Christ. 

There are several duties that grow out of that 
kinship. First is the duty to get acquainted with 
all your kinsfolk. They are the best people there 

[36] 



A Brotherhood 



are. They will be an honor to you, even those 
who are not prominent or mighty. Secondly, 
make it easy for them to take you into their fel- 
lowship, and comfortable to them while you are 
in. Do not be offish. Do not wait to be coaxed 
or especially noticed. Thirdly, live up to the 
family ideals and traditions. You are no longer 
isolated. You represent all the others; in fact, 
the whole family. The general estimate of the 
family of faith will depend on the way you rep- 
resent them. If the reputation of that family 
in the community has been lowered by some 
unfortunate or erring member, it will be one of 
your most sacred duties to restore its standing. 
There will always be varieties of view on many 
matters, but the exposure of the home interests to 
outside and prejudiced onlookers will be a most 
dastardly bit of unfaithfulness. Keep the family 
secrets safe. 

2. Equality 

(i) No Privileged Classes. In certain coun- 
tries where they have " classes " ordained by law, 
or by custom and tradition, those who are called 
the " nobility " constitute the " privileged class," 
but there are none in this family, even though 
some may have developed habits at variance with 
the law of equality. When such habits are found, 
they are in violation of Christian principles, and 
are due to the weaknesses and faults which those 
principles are seeking to correct. They violate 
the law of the family of faith. 

[37] 



You and Your Church 



(2) No Distinctions Within the Family. In 
some countries there are distinctions made in 
favor of the firstborn child, called the law of 
primogeniture, under which the oldest son in- 
herits the highest title, a larger part of the estate, 
and the honor of being the family representative 
in a legal and social way. Not so with your 
church. You are just as much a representative 
as the oldest and highest member, and all the 
fame and honors and reputation and influence of 
the family are yours. All of us are equal before 
Christ, the Elder Brother. If the Head of the 
family has any favorites at all, it must be the 
most needy or those who serve most and best. 

(3) No one has authority over your beliefs, 
and you have all the rights and privileges that 
any one else has, even though there may be great 
inequality in talent and attainments and personal 
values. Whatever authority may be invested in 
given officers, it is so invested only for a given 
period and purpose. It comes from God and 
reaches them through the church, and you have 
the same right to say who shall hold the office 
that any other member of the church has. 

(4) Because of that equality there are at least 
two duties to be urged upon you: First, if you 
are superior to any of the others in natural gifts 
and attainments, you must hold those gifts and 
attainments for the benefit of all and must bestow 
them on the others, and not in a grudging or re- 
luctant way, as of necessity, but cheerfully, joy- 
ously, as paying a debt, a debt that grows greater 

[38] 



A Brotherhood 



with the effort to discharge it. You must recog- 
nize, then, that the others have a right to all you 
know and are and have, in the way of spiritual 
value. Secondly, if you are inferior to any of 
the members in your attainments, it is your right, 
not privilege merely, but right, to avail yourself 
of their gifts and graces and powers and thereby 
enrich and empower yourself. Some of your fel- 
low members may be distinguished intellectually, 
or socially, or for eloquence or skill as religious 
workers, or for personal influence or prominence 
in their callings, but their fame is your fame, their 
honors yours, their worth your worth. 

3. Community of Interests 

You have many things in common besides 
equality of rights and privileges. 

( i ) Whatever interests the church as a whole 
has, each member has — evangelistic, educational, 
missionary, benevolent. To each group in the 
church duties are assigned, yet to each group 
belong the interests of the other groups. The 
Sunday school worker is always interested in the 
work of the young people, and the Ladies' Aid 
is not at all indifferent to the interests of the 
Juniors or the Boys' Band. Whatever section you 
serve in, you belong to all. Whatever knowledge 
you have, whatever wisdom, it belongs to all. It 
must go to the market-place and not be wrapped 
up in a napkin. You can never learn any truth 
that does not belong to your brethren, (i Tim. 
6 : 17-19.) 

[39] 



You and Your Church 



(2) Experiences are held in common, even 
those that are most personal. Your joys and 
sorrows are distributed to your fellow members. 
Even the worst experience and the lack of ex- 
perience are held in common. 

(3) Your very faults belong to the other mem- 
bers. You will learn that one of the most in- 
teresting things about people is their faults. They 
make you feel comfortable. It is almost a plea- 
sure to find that others have faults as well as 
yourself. That fellow feeling makes us won- 
drous kind. You say to yourself, " He hath but 
stumbled in the path thou hast in weakness trod." 
The faults of others show you how not to do and 
inspire you to unselfish efforts in their behalf, for 
you have the guardianship of your brothers and 
sisters in Christ and you must help them to mend 
their ways, and do it in a loving, Christlike way. 
They help you to correct your own faults. It 
helps you to cultivate wisdom and tact and good- 
ness. You not only have to live with people who, 
like yourself, have faults, but you have to help 
them overcome. (Gal. 6 : 1-3.) 

Now, in view of this community of interest 
with your brethren, here are several very plain 
duties : 

It is of primary importance that you make it 
as easy as possible for them to get along with 
you. " Consider thyself, lest thou also be 
tempted." 

Learn to do cooperative work, not only with 
the few who are easy to work with but with even 

[40] 



A Brotherhood 



the most uncongenial and least companionable 
and interesting. 

Master the art of making their interests your 
own and do it without seeming to intrude or to 
regard yourself as their superior. 

Try to become a wise counselor to whom peo- 
ple will come of their own accord, knowing that 
you can be trusted with delicate confidences and 
weighty responsibilities of sympathy. 



[41] 



Ill 

AN ORGANISM 

1. An Organization 

In coming into this brotherhood you found not 
a mere aggregation of so many individuals, but 
an organization ; not a mob for guerrilla warfare, 
but an army for regular service, coordinated, co- 
operative, and, when in action, " terrible as an 
army with banners " ; not simply so many mem- 
bers of the body called the church, but the body 
itself of which you are a member; not simply 
so many living stones piled up together in im- 
promptu order, or disorder, but all " growing into 
an holy temple " whose walls glow with light and 
expand by the laws of the heavenly architecture 
upward and outward ; not simply children of the 
Father, but members of the Father's household, 
" the household of faith." Organization in living 
objects means two things : structure and function. 
Together you and the rest of them, form a struc- 
ture, and together you perform functions that re- 
quire more than one person. 

2. An Organism 

It is not only an organization but an organism, 
as implied above. You are not only brought to- 
gether, but "born" together; that is, "born 

[42] 



An Organism 



again " individually into a " together " spirit and 
destiny ; brought together, not by external power, 
but by the inner pressure of the Spirit of God 
who dwells within you. So the word " organ- 
ism " seems more apt than the word " organiza- 
tion," for, in all living things, it is life that 
produces organization with its structure and func- 
tions, but organization does not produce life. 
Mechanism means death, while organism means 
organization plus the life that produces it. You 
are in a living body. 

( i ) You found that this organism, which we 
call a church, is self-directive. Just as all the 
individuals in the group have equal access to God 
and to people, so each group has the same right 
to deal directly with God as any other group. 
There is no body in authority over the group that 
you belong to. 

At this point it will be well to classify the dif- 
ferent types of church government, or polity, 
with which the world is familiar. One is the pre- 
latical, or episcopal type. Episcopos is the Greek 
word which means overseer and is translated 
bishop. An episcopacy means government by 
bishops or grades of officials above the local 
church. There are grades of this sort of gov- 
ernment all the way from the absolute autocracy 
of the Church of Rome, which does not permit its 
members to interpret, and does not really permit 
them to read, the Bible, does all their religious 
thinking for them, and takes complete charge of 
their souls, to the Protestant Episcopal Church, 



43] 



You and Your Church 



in which government comes down to the local 
church from above it, on to the Methodist Church 
where there is more real democracy than in any 
other form of the episcopacy. 

The presbyterial is another form of church 
polity, which is government of the local church 
by elders, the term presbyter being the English 
equivalent of the Greek word presbuteros, 
" elder." This is an overhead government of 
the local church through its representatives in 
presbyteries. Elder and bishop in the New Tes- 
tament designate one and the same office, each 
indicating a special phase or function of it, the 
term pastor being the one term that covers all 
those functions. 

The third form of government is the congrega- 
tional Each group governs itself, while many 
groups, which we call local churches, cooperate 
in what we call associations and conventions. 
They organize such bodies and control them, 
are not controlled by them, and they thereby 
carry out their own plans of larger cooperation. 

That was the original form of church govern- 
ment. If each individual has as much right to 
deal with God and his fellow men as any one else, 
so each group of individuals has as much right to 
be self -directive as any other group. There is 
every evidence that the New Testament churches 
were autonomous and that there was room for 
the fullest cooperation of all the congregations. 

The idea has three special considerations in its 
favor, in addition to the fact that the New Tes- 



[44] 



An Organism 



tamerrt churches were independent in their organ- 
ization, democratic, as we may say. First, it is in 
harmony with the most fundamental function of 
the human soul, namely, its right of self -direction. 
No one loses that right in entering a group of 
others that have the same right, nor does that 
group lose its autonomy. Secondly, it is in har- 
mony with the present trend in human develop- 
ment. Democracy is the predestined form of 
human government, in State and in Church. 
Thirdly, those who hold to the congregational 
form of government are the ones whose agitation 
has produced those religious revolutions and ref- 
ormations that have resulted in civil democracy 
and freedom over the earth, as well as religious 
liberty. 

The objection has been raised that church de- 
mocracy is too good for human nature, and the 
objection is valid if we think of unregenerate 
human nature, but it is just exactly the thing 
for regenerate men and women. That is the 
only kind of people for membership in any church. 
It has been said that people need a stronger form 
of government to hold them together, but the 
bond of a new life in Christ is mightier than 
any sort of legal or mechanical ties. The liga- 
ments of life and of love are stronger than death 
and sin and all human weakness. A regenerate 
church-membership is fitted for self-government, 
and no other kind is. 

This organization is doing three distinct things 
for you: 

[45] 



You and Your Church 



First, it is conserving your individuality with 
all its vital powers. A religious paternalism, an 
autocracy, would be a mechanism, even though it 
might be a very powerful one, and you would be 
a cog, or bolt, or some other subordinate part 
in the machine. There is individuality in you, 
and the church preserves and develops that. 
There is a multitudinous element in you, and it 
develops that. There is a hunger in you, and it 
satisfies that. There is a helplessness in you, and 
it energizes that. There is a desire in you to im- 
part, and it provides for that. You are even 
more of an individual than when you came in. 
Yes, it preserves your individuality while social- 
izing you. 

Secondly, it disciplines and nurtures the life. 
It does that by its worship, by its instruction, by 
the watch-care of the stronger over the weaker, 
by the work it provides for you to do in an in- 
dividual way, and especially by the work you do 
in a cooperative way, by the attitude you take to- 
ward the others and toward the world at large, 
and by " the work of faith and labor of love and 
patience of hope " to which it prompts you. It 
suppresses no one but draws you into the high- 
est expression of self and secures the finest dis- 
cipline and development. 

Thirdly, it completes you by socializing you. 
You are associated with people in every stage 
of growth, each " going on unto perfection, all 
growing into a full-grown man, unto the measure 
of the stature of the fulness of Christ," growing 



[46] 



An Organism 



up " in all things unto him who is the head, even 
Christ, from whom all the building fitly framed 
and knit together through that which every joint 
supplieth, according to the working in due mea- 
sure of each several part, maketh the increase of 
the body unto the building up of itself in love " 
(Eph. 4 : 15, 16). 

(2) In order to be self-directive, this organiza- 
tion has leadership. Not drivership, for there's 
no place for a driver in the church. Nor does 
it mean headship, for there is no head of the 
church, whether we mean the local group, or use 
the word loosely to mean organized Christianity, 
save the Lord Jesus Christ whom God gave " to 
be head over all things to the church, which is his 
body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all " 
(Eph. 1 : 22, 23). 

Leadership is essential to any working body, 
for evident reasons. In the church there are two 
types of work, and therefore we have two kinds 
of leaders, or officers, if we prefer the latter term. 
That is, it is in the nature of the group to require 
two kinds of leadership. 

There is what we may call the spiritual leader- 
ship. That is an inclusive term, and it means 
those who lead in the development of character 
and the conduct of work by preaching, teaching, 
directing work, shepherding the people. 

We call them by several names, mostly pastor, 
though the terms " elder " and " bishop " refer 
to the same office, each one emphasizing a special 
phase of the service rendered. The term " pastor " 

[47] 



You and Your Church 



means a " shepherd," and the pastor does what 
the Eastern shepherd did for his flock, he feeds 
them, as Jesus said to Peter three times, " Feed 
my sheep," " Feed my lambs." He also weighs 
their duties and aids them, as the old elders of 
the Jews did, the word elder meaning the " aged," 
just as did the Latin word " senator." He 
" oversees " as director of work. We sum it all 
up in the term pastor or minister. The latter 
means servant, and that fully describes his work. 

The other office is that of deacon. This word 
also means servant, and the office was instituted 
to serve the people on the more material side. It 
has followed the people in their needs and aids 
the pastor in still more intimate ways. 

The two are the permanent New Testament 
offices. Paul gives instructions to the young min- 
ister Timothy (i Tim. 3 : 1-15) about the of- 
ficers of the church, calling them bishops and 
deacons. He addresses his letter to the Philip- 
pians " to all the saints," and adds " with the 
bishops and deacons." Peter writes about the 
same office and calls it that of elder (1 Peter 
5 : 1-4), and says, " The elders who are among 
you I exhort, who am also an elder," which 
means the same office as bishop, and he tells the 
elders what to do, how to act the pastor — " feed 
the flock," adding, " When the great Shepherd 
shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory." 
We never take the time to use all these three 
words, but we convey them all in the word pastor 
or minister. 



[48 



An Organism 



These two officers are required in the very 
nature of the organization, and each one is called 
into action as need requires. 

There are other leaders required for specific 
work, like teachers and trustees, visitors, helpers 
with the poor, directors of education and mis- 
sions and music. They are needed in the com- 
plex life into which we are growing, but those 
named above are the two structural offices of the 
church, given by the Master for its efficiency 
and success, and are therefore permanent. 

(3) There are three requirements of all the of- 
ficers and leaders of the church: 

First of all, they must be chosen for the work. 
They are to be servants, and they must be 
chosen, not by themselves, but by the members 
of the church; not by some other church, nor by 
some group of officials over the church, for there 
is no group higher in authority than the local 
church itself, but by the local church which they 
are to serve. In that choice you have a voice and 
a. vote, and it counts one just as any other vote 
counts one, even though others may be older in 
years and experience and wisdom and personal 
influence. That right may never be taken away 
from you by any one or any group. It is yours 
as long as you are in the church. When they 
needed " the seven " in the church at Jerusalem, 
Peter did not say, " I'll look out some suitable 
men for the place," but he said to the church, 
" Look ye out from among you seven men," and 
all had a voice in it. 



[49 



You and Your Church 



Secondly, they must have actual or potential fit- 
ness for the position to which they are appointed. 
The office is not hereditary, nor is the fitness 
hereditary or official, but personal. Natural gifts 
and training, spiritual graces and experience 
give their varying fitness. There must also be 
fitness that grows with experience in the work. 
When any one shows that he is not fitted, or 
declines in the fitness that he showed at the be- 
ginning, he should be retired from the office in 
a Christlike way. You are under obligation to 
participate in all of this. 

Thirdly, all must have the spirit of service. 
That's what the words " minister " and " deacon " 
mean. The Master said he came not to be min- 
istered unto, but to minister and to give his life 
a ransom for all, and he asks, " Is the servant 
above his Lord ? " Peter warned those who are 
in positions of leadership not to " lord it over 
God's heritage," but to " feed the flock of God . . . 
willingly, . . of a ready mind " (i Peter 5 : 2, 3). 

3. Therefore Your Duties in the Case 

( 1 ) Be a sound member of the body of Christ, 
not a diseased member, like a sore foot that can- 
not walk on errands, or a palsied hand that can- 
not lift, or a stiff shoulder that cannot get under 
burdens, or a blind eye that cannot see the tasks 
that are near you, or a bad heart that gives out 
under the strain of work, or a deaf ear that can- 
not hear the calls for help. Be a good, sound 
member. 



[50] 



An Organism 



(2) Never fail to exercise your right or face 
your obligation to have a part in the selection of 
those who are to lead. You must always be able 
to say heartily, " my pastor " and " my deacons." 
If you do not, you become atrophied; you will 
excuse yourself from obvious duties; you will be- 
come a disturber; you will make yourself in a 
degree an outsider. 

(3) Support them so that they can succeed. 
They cannot succeed unless you do support them. 
Help them by following them in the work in 
which you and the others ask them to lead. Re- 
member that it was you who conferred the power 
on them. When you think they are failing, re- 
member they may be failing simply for the lack 
of the support you might give them. That may 
save them from humiliating failure and save the 
cause from injury. Honor requires that you 
support them. Self-respect requires it. 

(4) Make yourself so efficient in any work you 
do in the church that you will be ready for any 
position that is offered you. You prepare for it 
unconsciously by being faithful to every duty as- 
signed to you and by trying to understand the 
duties of the positions held by others. Be pre- 
pared to answer God's call to the ministry or to 
other work that needs you. 



[51] 



IV 

ACCUMULATED TREASURES 

Of course you didn't find everything perfect in 
the church, but you found treasures that had been 
accumulating for centuries. 

1. Treasures of Truth 

The big ideas of life were there. They had 
been gathered from the Scriptures, from the 
teachings of the great students and preachers and 
from Christian people of all kinds. They had 
been reduced to practice, and that has clarified 
them, defined them, and made them human. 
They were not shut up in the church or in the 
Bible, for all truths are for all people, but they 
had been massed and humanized among the peo- 
ple of God. 

There is truth about God, as disclosed by Jesus 
and by the writers of the Bible and tested in life 
by God's people. This was ready for distribution 
in the church — the truth as to God's majesty and 
mercy, his greatness and his grace. There is 
truth about the origin of man, his sins, his strug- 
gles, his perfections in Christ, the sacredness of 
life, its possibilities. Truth also about home and 
human relationships, God's ownership of us, and 

[52] 



Accumulated Treasures 



our stewardship over our possessions, our respon- 
sibility for the care of mankind. All the big ideas 
of life were in that group which you entered, 
and they were worked out in practice, refined by 
use, illuminated in character. 

2. Treasures of Ideals 

That means the attitude people take toward the 
truths they hold or are taught as they use their 
imaginations about life and mankind and God 
and Jesus. They dream dreams and see visions. 
They create an atmosphere. You come to see 
what they see, but in your own way. You 
breathe in the atmosphere. You found ideals of 
that sort, held by imperfect people who were 
often unchristlike, but there is purity in them, 
and your own vision is clarified. 

3. Treasures of Habit 

There are habits of worship, and you fell into 
them, modifying them by your own experience; 
habits of Bible study which have helped you to 
work out your own method of using the great 
book ; habits of giving, for you found the people 
using their money for the glory of God and under 
his guidance, thereby indicating both where and 
how you might meet your Lord's wishes for you ; 
habits of interpreting God's movements and en- 
terprises in the world that throw light on your 
own life and make for you one of the most in- 
teresting exercises of mind and heart; habits of 
work. 

T 53 1 



You and Your Church 



4. Treasures of Character 

The best people in the world, taking them all 
together, are in the church. Their characters are 
your joy. They show the direction which your 
own development will take, show your possi- 
bilities, lure you on in realizing them. All possi- 
ble virtues are there, some in full bloom, some in 
the budding stage, others only a prophecy. The 
characters of the church people became your pos- 
session. They enrich you. 

All these treasures have been gathering for 
centuries for you. You had nothing to do with 
producing them. Thousands of people have been 
bringing them there for you. Remember the 
lines of Sam Walter Foss : 

This rose I cut with careless shears, 

And wear and cast away, 

The cosmos wrought a million years 

To make it mine a day. 

This lily by the pasture bars, 

Beneath the walnut tree, 

Long ere the fire-mists formed in stars 

"Was on its way to me. 

Only they are yours for all time. God had been 
directing all those thousands of people in their 
preparations for you. I ought to say millions in- 
stead of thousands. You have suddenly come 
into the possession of the most precious estate 
any one ever did inherit this side of the glory 
land. I am not saying the people are perfect or 

[54] 



Accumulated Treasures 



that the treasures are unmingled with impurities. 
But they were made ready for you; there they 
are, and they are yours. 

5. Treasures of Work 

Work has been accumulating for them and for 
you. Here are some duties: 

(i) Appreciate those treasures and their pro- 
ducers. Realize your indebtedness to those who 
came before you into the church, those of the 
distant as well as the nearer past. 

(2) Appropriate them. That's what they are 
for. It would be a sin not to do so. Yet those 
treasures are to be used not in the spirit of a 
slave or of a dolt but with discretion. 

(3) Be a producer of virtue and of all the 
spiritual values you have found in the church. 
Otherwise you are only a consumer, not a produc- 
ing member of the church — an unnatural person. 

(4) Transmit them to the next to come in and 
see that others fall heir to them as you have done. 
Otherwise there is a break in the chain of pro- 
duction, and you go down in history as a para- 
site, inheriting and not bequeathing, receiving 
and not bestowing, consuming and not producing. 



[55] 



THE GREAT DISTINCTIVE 

On coming into the church you found the great 
truth which lies down at the bottom of our whole 
faith, that which we call the Baptist Distinctive, 
and the cluster of truths which vitally and essen- 
tially belong to it. 

That distinctive is what makes a person a Bap- 
tist, whether he is fully aware of it or not, and, 
without it, no one is a Baptist, even though a 
member of a Baptist church. Acceptance of that 
truth as a truth makes one a Baptist in theory; 
the attempt to reduce it to practice makes one a 
Baptist in reality. 

1. What It Is Not 

( 1 ) By some it is thought that the doctrine of 
immersion alone, as baptism, is our distinctive. 
But the Greek Church practises immersion alone ; 
so do some other churches ; and they are not Bap- 
tists. Our distinctive is something that lies down 
under and back of the practice of immersion and 
requires it. 

(2) Others imagine that, as we do not practise 
infant baptism, it is the doctrine of " believers' 
baptism." We never use the phrase " adult bap- 
tism," for an adult is a grown person, and a child 

[56] 



The Great Distinctive 



reaches the age when he can intelligently and of 
his own accord accept Christ long before he is 
grown. No child ought to postpone the accep- 
tance of his Saviour and obedience to that Sa- 
viour's commands till he is an " adult." I have 
baptized many children under ten years of age, 
and they had so definitely become believers, per- 
sonal Christians, that it was as much " believers' 
baptism " as if they were eighty years old. There 
are other denominations that do not baptize in- 
fants and yet are not Baptists — the " Disciples 
of Christ," for example. No, our distinctive lies 
below and back of this practice and requires it. 

(3) Still others have, without much thought, 
supposed that our distinctive is our independent, 
or congregational, form of church government. 
But there are several other denominations which 
have that polity, like the Congregationalists, Dis- 
ciples, and others, and they are not Baptists. Our 
distinctive lies below and back of this form of 
church polity and requires it. 

2, What It Is 

It is just this : The right of each person equally 
with every other person in the world to deal 
directly with God, through Christ, and, therefore, 
to deal with other persons. Which means that 
the most cultured and Christlike person in the 
world, even though he occupies the most prom- 
inent place in Church or State, has no more in- 
herent right to approach God and talk to him 
and listen to him, as he speaks through the Bible 

1571 



You and Your Church 



and "through his Spirit that dwelleth in you," 
than the most degraded wretch alive. The 
former knows how to do it more successfully 
than the latter, but God is anxious to have that 
wretch stop in his way and listen to him and 
speak to him and receive his love and forgive- 
ness. No one has any more right to pray and 
read the Bible than that guilty soul. In one sense 
" there is no difference, for all have sinned and 
come short of the glory of God," as Paul says. 

This equality before God and equality with 
men is such that no man or group of men or or- 
ganization can stand between any one and God 
and say, " You have to pass through my hands 
before God will let you talk to him, or listen to 
him, or have anything to do with him, or get 
forgiveness from him, or serve him." 

That's the Baptist distinctive in part. The 
other part of it is the responsibility to God for 
doing it. That brings up another matter, namely, 
the way God deals with us, his approach to us 
through Jesus, the plans of Jesus for helping us 
to deal with God, the authority of Jesus as " God I 
manifest in the flesh," so that he is our one Mas- 
ter, whose mastery over us does not destroy that 
distinctive, but fulfils it; does not enslave, but 
liberates us from the bondage of sin; does not 
set one person with special rights over others, but 
sets each to serving all, and gives us the authorita- 
tive word for our " instruction in righteousness, 
that the man of God may be complete, completely 
equipped unto every good work." God alone can 

[58] 



The Great Distinctive 



enforce his will on any one and compel us to ac- 
cept our responsibility. No one has ever been 
authorized to compel any one to deal with God. 
Christ is the only Master. 

This is the side of our distinctive that our 
fathers were dealing with when they said our law 
is the full and final authority of God over the 
soul, as he has revealed himself in Christ and told 
of it in the Bible. That's what we mean when we 
say the Bible is our only source of authority, our 
only rule in faith and practice. 

3. Why We Hold It 

( 1 ) There is a fundamental conviction in each 
soul that he ought to be just as free as any other 
soul } free in a physical way and free to have a 
part in the governing of his own life, which is 
civil liberty; free to worship God, which means 
religious liberty. Whenever people have had to 
submit to be governed in those respects, they have 
felt that they were deprived of their rights, ex- 
cept in those countries where the people have 
been abnormalized into machines and do not 
know their rights. That fundamental conviction 
means something. 

(2) That conviction is based on something in 
our nature and in our relations to each other 
which requires it. We were actually created 
equal. When God made man he made man so 
that any one belonging to any race of man, any 
tribe, any family, would have the same essential 
characteristics that any other man of any other 

[59] 



You and Your Church 



tribe would have — the power of thought, feel- 
ing, willing, sense of right and wrong choice. 
That power of choice is the most fundamental 
function of the human soul. It is the human dis- 
tinctive. 

(3) That equality is based on the very nature 
of God. He made man in his own image. What- 
ever scars are on that image, whatever variations 
in personal endowments, in culture and worth 
we may find, the same essentials are in each one. 
God's nature is expressed within the limits of the 
human soul. That means equal rights and re- 
sponsibilities, even though opportunities and cir- 
cumstances are very unequal. 

(4) Jesus reaffirmed what had been established 
in the nature of man. He did it by realizing that 
truth in himself and by saying we should be like 
him. That is one way he taught it. He also 
taught it directly and in unmistakable words, as 
when he said, " Call no man master on earth, for 
one is your master, even Christ, and all ye are 
brethren" (Matt. 23 : 8). And his apostle 
Peter taught it when he said, " We must obey 
God rather than men." Those who are entrusted 
with God's message of salvation, on which the 
souls of men depend, must proclaim it exactly and 
with the authority of Christ, but no one may 
enforce the obligation of the individual to let 
Christ save him. That would interfere with the 
fundamental function of the soul. 

( 5 ) It is the basis on which <c the parliament 
of man, the federation of the world " must rest. 

[60] 



The Great Distinctive 



There is a social structure to be built, and it must 
include all. That is impossible unless it is built 
on the deepest, most distinctive thing in man. 
That deepest thing is the power of choice, based 
on the sense of personality, which includes all 
that goes along with it — the right of choice and 
the responsibility for it. There we find the most 
precious thing of all, not life, but the right to live, 
to live in one's chosen relations and employments 
and habits. This is not the right of one person 
alone, or of one group of people, like the ruling 
class, but of every person on earth. It is the 
right to deal directly with God and with man and 
to enter personally into the structure of human 
society. There must be no preferred people, ex- 
cept as some may have greater power to serve the 
others. That is the Christian ideal, the ideal of 
democracy. The race, from the very beginning, 
has been headed for democracy, as its ultimate 
form of organization both in the state and in 
religion. 

4. Why Our Distinctive Is Not Universally Ac- 
cepted 

(i ) There are other elements in human nature 
besides the power of choice, and some of them 
are selfish, even wicked. One is superstition, and 
this has played a large part in the degradation of 
humanity. Another is hatred, with jealousy and 
envy. Still another is ambition for power and 
prominence and wealth. These have made des- 
pots and pitiable slaves. 

[61] 



You and Your Church 



(2) There have grown up institutions in the 
world that have embodied, crystallized in them- 
selves all the human elements which are opposed 
to that great distinctive in State and Church; the 
people were denied their right to have part in the 
government of themselves. 

5. How It Was Discarded 

Here is the natural history of the loss of that 
truth after Jesus had given it: Soon after his 
departure people began to attach special value to 
the ceremonies which he gave. That seemed al- 
most inevitable, and it explains why he gave us 
so few. They began to think that baptism had a 
magical power to wash away their sins, and some 
went so far as to call it a " regenerating bath." 
It was not the Jewish but the pagan converts 
who thus perverted the idea of baptism. Among 
them was a deeply ingrained belief in the efficacy 
of external rites. They brought that with them 
from the old religions with their mysteries and 
magical ceremonies. The two ordinances which 
Jesus gave, were in their estimation not symbols 
of truths and experiences, but had a magical 
power. There was another well-developed form 
of superstition which they could not throw off 
very easily. It was what we call sacerdotalism, 
the magic of a priesthood. That led them to at- 
tribute superhuman powers to preachers, which 
made it seem necessary that these priests should 
manipulate the man who wanted to become a 
Christian before God would accept him. 

[62] 



The Great Distinctive 



By the end of the first century this idea of 
the magical power of the ordinances was gaining 
a great hold in some of the churches among the 
Gentiles. At first they said that remission of sins 
could come only in connection with baptism, 
though baptism without repentance was unavail- 
ing. Later, they taught that baptism itself saved 
the soul regardless of anything else. Tertullian, 
who was active from about A. D., 190 to 220, 
wrote, " Is it not wonderful that death should 
be washed away by bathing? " and again, " Water 
alone — always a perfect, gladsome, simple, mate- 
rial substance, pure in itself — supplied a worthy 
vehicle for God "; also, " Water was the first to 
produce that which had life, that it might be no 
wonder in baptism if water know how to give 
life " ; and again, " The nature of the waters, 
sanctified by the Holy One, itself conceived withal 
the power of sanctifying." " All waters there- 
fore, in virtue of the pristine privilege of their 
origin, do, after invocation of God, attain the 
sacramental power of sanctification ; for the 
Spirit immediately supervenes from the heavens 
and rests over the waters, sanctifying them from 
himself ; and being thus sanctified they imbibe at 
the same time the power of sanctifying." 

That is to say, some one was put in between the 
soul and God, and the sinner was told, " You 
cannot get to God without passing through my 
hands, even though you have repented of your 
sins and are trusting alone in Jesus to save you 
from your sins." Of course, that was not only 

[63] 



You and Your Church 



a sin against the nature of man and of God, but 
it was singular mistreatment of Christ and of the 
Scriptures, especially a mistreatment of the cere- 
mony of baptism. It changed baptism from a 
symbolic to a saving ordinance. Christ gave it 
as a symbol of death and resurrection, his 
death for our sins and his resurrection for our 
justification; of the death of the one who is 
baptized to his sins and his resurrection to a new 
life; of the resurrection of the body that is yet to 
take place. But if it is a ceremony that saves or 
is necessary to salvation, it is no longer a sermon 
in which one tells what saved him, nor is it a rela- 
tion of one's experience in dying to the old and 
rising to the new life, nor the proclamation of 
one's hope of rising from the dead. Baptism is 
gone as a symbol. 

That was the first interference with the work- 
ing of that distinctive after Christ confirmed our 
native instincts and convictions about it. 

Evil results followed very soon, involving 
errors and controversies that are not dead yet. 

One curious result survives to this day and is a 
thorn in the side of Christianity. A man was 
dying. He had repented of his sins and was 
trusting in Christ for his salvation, but he had 
never been baptized and would therefore be lost 
and go to hell. It would not do to let him be lost, 
but how would they help it, for he had never been 
baptized and would die in the act if they at- 
tempted to baptize him? Instead of telling him 
that baptism was only a picture and that he was 

[64] 



The Great Distinctive 



already saved through his trust in Christ and that 
God never did require a person to do what he 
could not do, they mourned him as lost forever. 
Finally one man said : " I have it. We will pour 
water all over him, making it look as much like a 
baptism as possible, and the church will accept it, 
not exactly as the real thing, but as a substitute." 
It was accepted simply as a substitute and under 
protest. The next time it was still easier to use 
the substitute, and from pouring water all over 
the man to pouring it on the forehead, and finally 
to sprinkling it on the forehead, , was an easy 
transition. Thus the two substitutes for baptism 
arose, founded on the first interference with the 
principles of the right of each one to deal with 
God for himself. Every time one of the sub- 
stitutes is used it is a proclamation of the super- 
stition out of which it arose, namely, that bap- 
tism is necessary to salvation. 

A second interference with that great distinc- 
tive came naturally and inevitably. When they 
reached the conclusion that there could be no sal- 
vation for anybody without baptism they re- 
garded unbaptized infants as lost. Pagan con- 
verts had previously practised infant lustrations 
or washings in their religious ceremonials, and 
therefore they easily caught the idea of infant 
baptism. Once having decided that no one could 
be saved without baptism,, they believed that a 
child dying without it was lost. At first, they 
only baptized children that were in immediate 
danger of death. Later, their theology taught 



[65] 



You and Your Church 



them that baptism was necessary for them in 
order to cleanse out hereditary sin. Still later, 
they conceived the idea that mortal sins com- 
mitted after baptism could never be forgiven. So 
they waited until they supposed the child was 
strong enough to guard himself against mortal 
sins before they baptized him. But by the middle 
of the third century they had changed their theol- 
ogy so as to admit that those who had lapsed 
into mortal sin after baptism might be restored, 
and from that time the practice of infant baptism 
has been very prevalent. 

Thus all the evils of infant baptism arose. 
Baptism was something done to the child without 
his knowledge or consent instead of something 
done by him as an act of loving loyalty to his 
Saviour. In other words, the child was taken 
charge of with the idea that God would send the 
poor thing to hell if it was not manipulated by 
some one with that ceremony. It was as if I 
should say to one of my children, " You shall 
never enter my presence as long as we both live, 
unless your older brother should dress you in a 
uniform and bring you in." What a strange and 
repulsive God they created ! 

A third interference followed. The character 
of the church, its spirit, and its organisation were 
entirely changed. The simple New Testament 
pattern of equal rights for all within the church 
was torn and destroyed. If one person has the 
same right to deal directly with God and man 
that any other person has, then one group of 

T 661 



The Great Distinctive 



persons has as much right as any other group, 
and no other group or set of men has, or can 
have, any authority over it. But that was all 
changed. I can do no better than to quote from 
Dr. A. H. Newman in his " History of Anti- 
Pedobaptism " : 

Other perversions of Christianity during the early 
centuries are so universally recognized by historians, 
and so familiar to all readers of church history, that 
they need only be barely mentioned here. Sacerdotal- 
ism, a constant factor in pagan religious systems, soon 
intruded itself into the Christian church. The ordi- 
nances, having become mysteries, must be administered 
by a ceremonially qualified priesthood ; and, as the ser- 
vices became elaborate and each function must be per- 
formed by a properly qualified functionary, clerical 
gradations came to be multiplied and accurately differen- 
tiated. Out of the simple polity of the apostolic time, in 
accordance with which each congregation chose its own 
bishops or presbyters and deacons for the direction of 
the spiritual work of the body, the administration of 
discipline, and the collection and distribution of 
charities, there was developed, under the influences of 
the time, a system of presidential administration in 
which the chief elder (or bishop) directed the affairs 
of the local church with the assistance and advice of 
a board of presbyters. As the responsible head of the 
church he soon came to have chief control of the 
finances and such control tended to increase his rela- 
tive importance. As Christian work spread from older 
centers the newly established congregations were kept 
in relations of dependence on the mother church, or 
rather, as integral parts thereof. Thus the pastor of 
the central church would have the supervision of a 
gi eater or smaller number of outside congregations 
over each of which a presbyter of the central church 
came to preside. Thus arose diocesan episcopacy. At 



[67] 



You and Your Church 



first this arrangement was adopted without any am- 
bitious intentions on the part of the pastors as seem- 
ingly the most effective way of conducting Christian 
work. But, as the dependent congregations became 
conscious of strength and their presbyter-pastors be- 
came restless under episcopal control, which in some 
cases was no doubt arbitrarily exercised, friction arose 
between bishops and presbyters. By this time (about 
the middle of the third century — the case of Cyprian 
and the Carthaginian presbyters is in point) the sacer- 
dotal idea was pretty fully developed. Cyprian and 
those who were like-minded believed that ecclesiastical 
unity was absolutely essential and that schism was one 
of the greatest of evils. They went so far as to main- 
tain that outside of the one ecclesiastical organization, 
whose center of unity was found in the episcopate, 
there is no salvation. By the strong opposition that 
the presbyters made to the assumption of authority on 
the part of the bishops the latter were led to assert 
the divine right and the irresponsibility of bishops. 
The same sense of the necessity of organic union and 
unity of administration afterward led to the central- 
ization of authority in metropolitans and finally in the 
papacy. 

To quote further from Doctor Newman : 

No less destructive of the spirit of primitive Chris- 
tianity was the early intrusion of the doctrine of the 
merit oriousness of external works. Jews and pagans 
alike attached great merit to almsgiving, fasting, and 
the frequent utterance of fixed forms of prayer. By 
the middle of the third century leading churchmen like 
Cyprian did not hesitate to teach that almsgiving is a 
means of securing the remission of sins and of pur- 
chasing an eternal inheritance. 

Asceticism also was imported into early Christianity 
from paganism. The disposition to regard the body as 
intrinsically evil and all natural impulses as worthy 



[68 J 



The Great Distinctive 



only of being trampled upon, is a common feature of 
pagan religions. Fanatical seeking for martyrdom, ex- 
cessive fasting, and the exaltation of virginity were 
the earliest forms of Christian asceticism. It cul- 
minated in the brutalities of hermit life. 

Superstition and idolatry were universally prevalent 
in ancient paganism as they are in modern. They per- 
vaded and corrupted every department of life and 
occupied a most prominent place in the popular con- 
sciousness. In proportion as Christianity increased in 
popular influence and enjoyed immunity from persecu- 
tion was the accession to the church of unchristian- 
ized or imperfectly Christianized life. Not only did the 
ordinances assume a pagan hue and sacerdotal and 
ascetic ideas become prevalent, but idolatrous practices 
corresponding in almost every detail with those of the 
surrounding heathenism came to be openly indulged in 
and regarded as Christian. The exaltation of saints 
and martyrs, the worship of images of Christ and the 
saints, the veneration of bones and other relics of the 
worthies of the past, pilgrimages to shrines and other 
holy places, vigils at the tombs of saints, the invocation 
of Mary the mother of Jesus as " the mother of God/' 
the invocation of saints, belief in the efficacy of relics 
and shrines to cure diseases — these and many like 
superstitious practices were countenanced by some of 
the ablest and holiest of the Christian leaders of the 
fourth and following centuries and, by the fifth century, 
had become well-nigh universal. 

Thus we see that two forces were operating 
to produce that change, one from the inside of 
the church and one from without. People came 
into the church to get saved, not because they 
were saved. They reversed the vital and essen- 
tial order by trying to get to Christ through the 
church instead of getting into the church through 

[69] 



You and Your Church 



Christ. The result was that they were not saved 
at all, for the simple reason that that is not the 
way to be saved. The church filled up with peo- 
ple who had not been born again, but held the 
old ungodly ambitions they brought from pagan- 
ism and the new ambitions which their new op- 
portunities awakened within them. The result 
was a passion for prominence and power. Pagans 
came into the church by the thousand, and the 
outcome was the growth of what is called the 
hierarchy — a gradation of officials with magical 
ceremonies and rituals. The church of the apos- 
tles was gone, and a semi-heathen organization 
had taken its place. 

A fourth interference with that fundamental 
principle came along with this development of 
the hierarchy. That was the union of Church 
and State. Constantine, emperor of Rome, was 
" converted," and saw a luminous sign of the 
cross in the sky on which were written in letters 
of flame these words, In hoc signo vinces, which, 
being translated from the Latin into English, is, 
" In this sign thou shalt conquer." It was a very 
shrewd political " conversion," — fine politics. 
He would take over the church as the dominant 
religious force in the empire and make use of it 
to control the pagans of all sorts whom the em- 
pire had conquered, for they were superstitious 
enough to yield to the sway of the ruler who 
could bring to bear powerful religious sanctions 
for his government. Constantine made himself 
the champion of the Church. The State taxed 

[70] 



The Great Distinctive 



the people for the support of the Church and its 
strong arm was invoked to enforce the Church 
with all of its inhuman and bestial practices upon 
the people. 

From that day till the year 1638 there was not 
a country on the face of the earth where the 
Christian religion prevailed, but the Church and 
the State were united in the most unholy alliance 
that has ever disgraced civilization, the Church 
using the civil law to propagate its religion, sup- 
porting itself by taxing all the people whether 
they approved it or not, whether they were 
pagans or Christians, punishing those whose con- 
sciences could not accept its doctrines or meth- 
ods or ideals, ostracizing them, putting them 
in prison, torturing them, murdering them. Mil- 
lions were made martyrs by that inhuman in- 
famy. 

A fifth interference was in taking the Bible 
away from the people as a dangerous book and 
making the Church — so called — superior to it, 
making the Church's interpretation of it and ad- 
ditions to it authoritative rather than the book 
itself. " The entrance of thy words giveth light," 
and the corruptions and tyrannies of " the 
Church " could not endure that light. 

So here, then, are the historical steps by which 
that distinctive, which is based on the nature of 
man, the nature of God, and their mutual rela- 
tions, was set aside, and here are the several in- 
terferences with its workings: First, putting a 
man in between other souls and God and requir- 

[71] 



You and Your Church 



ing that they be manipulated by him before God 
will allow them to deal with him through the 
Saviour of us all, and, as a result, devising sub- 
stitutes for the beautiful ordinance of baptism 
because the essential idea that was in the ordi- 
nance had been destroyed; secondly, taking ad- 
vantage of unconscious and helpless infants to do 
to them without their knowledge or consent what 
God wants to be done by them of their own 
choice in loving and conscious obedience to him ; 
thirdly, destroying the independence of groups 
of individuals called local churches, and placing 
over them other groups, or select officials, to 
govern them; fourthly, that terrible union of 
Church and State which completed the perver- 
sion of Christianity, outraged human life, and 
made the beautiful earth run red with martyr 
blood; fifthly, reducing the word of God to a 
position of secondary and even lower importance. 

6. How It Was Restored 

But that distinctive was not, indeed, it could 
not be, permanently lost, because ( i ) it is essen- 
tially required by human nature, and some men 
would contend for it in some ways even if there 
had been no Providence over the world, (2) 
when men were really born again they would feel 
the working of that distinctive within them in 
an irrepressible way, (3) Jesus had confirmed 
and taught it, (4) it was God's will that it should 
come into universal recognition and become 
operative in all the world, (5) God planned that 

[72] 



The Great Distinctive 



it should be recovered and he guided that heroic 
achievement by his providence. 

The story of its recovery and its gradual re- 
instatement in the world is the most thrilling 
story of history since the days of the apostles. 
It lies back of all the romance and heroism of the 
Christian centuries. 

Three things were required: 

(i) There must be the idea itself. It could 
not be lost even though ambition and inhumanity 
were trying to kill it by appealing to superstition 
and ignorance and fear and a perverted self- 
interest. A right idea will persist ; a wrong idea 
will be lost or destroyed, in time, even though it 
leave behind it a trail of evil deeds and suffering. 
The right may lie dormant, or seemingly so, for 
a long time, but a new day will warm it into 
new life. 

(2) There must be advocates of the idea. 
And there were. We may call them the " rem- 
nant " left after and amid the general perver- 
sion of truth. God did not leave himself without 
witnesses. Ideas have to be advocated. Many 
people refused to go off with those who per- 
verted the ordinances in the ways already indi- 
cated ; there were true disciples and followers of 
the truth all down the centuries, even though they 
did not always see that truth whole and were not 
always free from fanaticism. 

They propagated the idea in two general ways : 

First, they agitated. They could not help do- 
ing so, for they felt that they would be false 

[73] 



You and Your Church 



to their Master and to the truth and to those who 
had perverted it if they did not bear their witness 
to the truth. They agitated, not simply because 
they wanted to be accorded their rights, but be- 
cause they wanted those who did not understand 
it to enjoy the freedom wherewith Christ makes 
us free, and thereby secure it to all others. They 
saw that the whole church life was in violation of 
the fundamental principles of humanity and of 
Christ. 

They agitated wherever they went. Sometimes 
they went into other countries in order to agitate ; 
and they went in some cases because they were 
told to get out of their own lands and to do it 
very quickly, and, of course, they were true to 
the truth, they could not hold their peace, even 
though this made it impossible to live in peace. 
They dreamed of the golden day coming when 
they would conquer through Jesus Christ and 
secure freedom for all. 

They were uncomfortable, but would have 
been more so if they had refrained from speaking 
the truth. They were willing to be mistreated 
rather than be whipped by their own consciences. 
They knew they made it uncomfortable for 
others, but they knew it was their business to 
make it not only uncomfortable, but unbearable 
for those who degraded truth and violated the 
deep and sacred things in life, all in the name of 
Christianity. 

Some of them were radical. Possessed by that 
one idea, as the most important thing for man- 

[74] 



The Great Distinctive 



kind just at that time, they often disparaged 
other ideas. They were not always constructive, 
but they were thinkers, and they were men of 
might. Fortunate was it for mankind, both in 
that age and in this, that there were such agi- 
tators. 

They did not agitate for civil liberty, but sim- 
ply for the right to worship God, as individuals 
and as groups, just as they believed God wanted 
them to worship him. They obeyed the laws of 
the countries in which they lived, except when 
those laws sought to deprive them of the right 
to worship God, but they were usually shrewd 
enough to leave the discussion of civil democ- 
racy alone. Perhaps they felt, as all the world 
now sees, that God was moving the world, slowly 
but surely, toward democracy as the ultimate 
form of human government. They knew that re- 
ligious democracy was essentially right and must 
surely come, and they must have known that civil 
democracy was a part of it. 

Perhaps they were wise enough to know that 
if they once established the sense of brotherhood 
in Christ among large numbers of people, once 
induced people in sufficient numbers to recognize 
the rights of conscience, civil democracy would 
be a fact, whatever the outward form of govern- 
ment. They were shrewd enough to know that 
if they advocated a form of civil government 
corresponding to the form of church polity which 
they held, they would lose their battle for their 
church polity and for religious liberty. But they 

[75] 



You and Your Church 



knew that, when hearts were changed, right rela- 
tions would be possible, would come by vital proc- 
esses under right guidance. They worked with 
the souls, the minds, the hearts, the wills of the 
people. That was the divine way. 

They put the first thing first. While it is true 
that God started the world toward civil and re- 
ligious democracy, still the world had to reach 
that goal through experience and not mechan- 
ically. The divine hand was guiding toward that 
end, but the end had to be attained through vol- 
untary submission of human life to God's will. 
Those agitators had the right idea, and they went 
at it the right way. 

The other way of propagating the idea was by 
illustration. Of this there were two kinds. Ad- 
vocates of the truth illustrated the supremacy of 
conscience in their own personal lives of right- 
eousness under human laws as individuals. They 
were troublesome, but troublesome mainly to 
wrong-doers, and they were the truest, most 
godly, and honest people on earth. Their lives 
were a powerful illumination of their idea. 

The other form of illustration was in their col- 
lective life, corporate life, church life, as we may 
variously phrase it. That is, they showed their 
equality before God and with each other by prac- 
tising a true democracy. They became an object- 
lesson of what they taught. Of course they did 
not do it perfectly; it never has been done per- 
fectly ; but they did it in the right spirit and in as 
perfect a way as they knew how. 

[76] 



The Great Distinctive 



Those people lived in various countries in Eu- 
rope — Italy, France, Germany, the British Isles — 
and were called by various names. " During 
the fourth and fifth centuries," to quote again 
from Doctor Newman, 

British Christians seem to have held aloof in a measure 
from the paganizing influences in which the Continental 
Church became involved. Diocesan episcopacy seems 
not to have existed. The study of the Scriptures was 
pursued with zeal in the numerous semi-monastic col- 
leges for the training of pastors and missionaries. An 
extensive and successful missionary work was carried 
on in Ireland, Scotland, France, and Germany. Human 
authority in matters of religion was indignantly re- 
pudiated. Humility and simplicity in Christian life 
were insisted upon, and the pomp and worldliness of the 
Roman missionaries who sought to convert them proved 
highly offensive. An example of their missionary ac- 
tivity is the work of Patrick (432 onward), who evan- 
gelized more or less thoroughly the whole of Ireland 
and left a reputation for sanctity of life and spiritual 
power that entitles him to be considered one of the 
greatest of missionaries. 

Another Irish Christian was Columba, who, in 
the sixth century, planted evangelical churches 
throughout Scotland. Still another Irishman was 
Columbanus, who, with thirteen companions, es- 
tablished missions in Burgundy, Switzerland, and 
northern Italy. The work inaugurated by him 
was carried into the Rhine Valley, Thuringia, 
Bavaria, and Southwestern Germany. Ebrard 
writes that there existed " a flourishing, well- 
organized, Rome-free church whose only su- 
preme authority was the holy Scriptures, whose 

[77] 



You and Your Church 



preaching was the word of the free redeeming 
grace of God." The same writer goes on: 

A simple but well-organized church existed from 
the Pyrenees to the Scheldt, from Chur to Utrecht, 
whose only crime was that it did not recognize the 
Roman Church as its supreme head; hence also knew 
no new invocation of saints, no mass, no auricular 
confession and the like, and did not do homage to gross 
Pelagianism, but preached justification through faith. 

Forster describes that church as " recognizing the 
Scriptures as its completely sufficient norm." 
Doctor Newman says: 

Notwithstanding the terrible persecutions to which 
they were subjected during the seventh and following 
centuries by the Saxon kings at the instigation of the 
Roman Church, Christians of the ancient British type 
are known to have maintained their existence in con- 
siderable numbers, especially in Wales and Scotland, 
until the eleventh century. It is probable that they 
were never completely destroyed and that they reap- 
peared in the Lollards of the fourteenth century. 

St. Patrick was just about as much a Roman 
Catholic as Dwight L. Moody was. He was an 
enemy of that church. These and other bodies 
of people had hold of that big distinctive, though 
not in its wholeness. They released the idea, and 
it went on tearing its way down the centuries. 

From the twelfth century on the advocates of 
that idea became more constant, more coherent. 
About the year 1173 Peter Waldo, a wealthy man 
of Lyons, France, gave up his property and de- 
voted himself to preaching the gospel. He and 

[78] 



The Great Distinctive 



his converts established churches in France, Italy, 
Bohemia, Southern Germany, and the southwest- 
ern provinces of Austria. 

There were sects called Taborites and Bohe- 
mian Brethren and Moravians and Pickards, who 
held the idea more or less whole. Peter Chel- 
cicky, of Bohemia, the spiritual father of the Bo- 
hemian Brethren, carried the doctrine of personal 
liberty further than most others had done. 

These bodies of Christians who stood for the 
great distinctive and opposed the corruption of 
Christianity, and its special evil of the union 
of Church and State, were the ones who brought 
on the revolutions which culminated in the great 
Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. 
They came to be called Anabaptists, " Rebap- 
tizers," a nickname given by their opponents be- 
cause, when a person baptized in infancy was 
converted, they baptized him again, to use their 
phrase, because they said that a person baptized 
without his knowledge or consent was not bap- 
tized at all, had not obeyed Christ for himself. 

Before Martin Luther the Anabaptists had 
been agitating, and Luther, because of his great 
personality, his executive ability, and his influence 
with people of prominence, came to be the recog- 
nized head of the movement. He came straight 
from the heart of the Catholic Church and had 
to get out of its entanglements as best he could. 
In theory he accepted almost every doctrine of the 
originators of the movement, and that move- 
ment came very near being an Anabaptist affair. 

r 79 1 



You and Your Church 



Possibly the world was not ready for it. Luther 
recognized the unscriptural and evil character of 
infant baptism, also the evils of the union of 
Church and State, but his theology was really 
that of Rome, and he had a polity that was 
medieval. The Reformation was at first demo- 
cratic, but Luther changed it, for he was a 
natural autocrat. 

The Anabaptists were the real thinkers of the 
Reformation, and Luther, when he came from 
the Wartburg to Wittenburg and found that the 
three Anabaptists, Nicholas Storch, Max Stub- 
ner, and Thomas Miinzer, were influencing Cel- 
larius and Carlstadt and even Melancthon to ac- 
cept their views, was filled with rage and drove 
them off. He roared with anger, saying to Stub- 
ner, " God punish you, Satan." That reaction 
from the clear thinking of the Anabaptists drove 
him to accept infant baptism as a means of per- 
petuating his church, for he was afraid to trust 
the gospel appeal alone, and it led him to retain 
the doctrine of the union of Church and State 
in order that he might not lose the support which 
he desired. He had taught that the baptism of 
infants was wrong in itself, a violation of the 
Bible and of human life, yet he retained it both 
in theory and practice. He had seen how the 
Church of Rome had taught that the bread and 
wine in the Lord's Supper were turned into the 
real body and blood of Christ, yet, instead of 
discarding that view and accepting the true mean- 
ing of it as a symbol of the broken body and shed 

[801 



The Great Distinctive 



blood of Christ, he retained the Supper as a 
" sacrament " instead of a symbol. While he 
said, again and again, that immersion alone was 
baptism, he retained the use of the substitutes 
which had grown up out of the perverted view 
of baptism as a saving rather than a symbolic 
ordinance. 

There was no government on earth that would 
give the believers in the democracy of the soul 
the liberty that was theirs by right; no govern- 
ment could then be induced to grant religious 
liberty. But there was also an unrest, a con- 
sciousness of the soul's right to be free, and a 
growing hatred of all systems that restrained the 
soul and kept it in bondage. Providence had 
been working for centuries to bring into being a 
free people who would become the distributing 
center for the principles of true liberty till they 
should spread over the whole world. 

A home for those ideas of liberty was essen- 
tial, and God had that home in reserve. It was 
discovered in 1492 by Columbus. It had not been 
discovered sooner because mankind was not in a 
condition to make the right use of it. Sooner, it 
would at once have been too completely pre- 
empted by autocracy of Church and State. Amer- 
ica was discovered at the psychological moment. 
It could not at once be taken possession of by the 
new ideas, because the people who held them were 
not in a position to take an immediate part in the 
building of the new state. Those who discovered 
the Western world were entirely unfitted to make 

F [81] 



You and Your Church 



it a land of freedom. The Latin races which 
were under the reign of the Roman Church grad- 
ually gave it up, and the one race that was at that 
time prepared to establish liberty, came into pos- 
session of the new country. In England the Bap- 
tists ( at first called Anabaptists) had been per- 
secuted by the very people who were best adapted 
by temperament to champion liberty — the Anglo- 
Saxons — but those Baptists were few and not 
very influential. The moment a land was opened 
in which those principles could be planted, to 
grow under the protection of the law, they were 
ready to enter. 

Among those who came into the new country 
we distinguish four main types of people. First, 
those who, to begin with, were State Church — 
Church of England — people, who taxed all in- 
discriminately for the support of the Church and 
had never dreamed of a free Church in a free 
State. Such were the early settlers of Virginia, 
and, when Baptists arose among them, preaching 
and practising liberty of conscience, they were 
fined, whipped, and imprisoned for their sins of 
preaching the gospel without permission from the 
State Church and of refusing to pay taxes to sup- 
port that corrupt Church. We usually speak of 
the Virginians as Cavaliers. 

A second class we call the Puritans. They set- 
tled in Boston and Salem and were so called be- 
cause they believed in a purer and more severe 
kind of religious life than that of the prevailing 
worldly people of the Church of England. They 

[82] 



The Great Distinctive 



did not leave the Church at first, but came to this 
country hoping to establish a better habit of life 
among their own people and to make it the pre- 
vailing type of life. They had no more idea of 
liberty than did those whom they left behind. 
They are the people who hung witches, whipped 
and fined Baptists, hung Quakers, and felt that 
in doing so they were doing distinguished and 
meritorious service to God. They are the peo- 
ple of whom some one said that they came to 
this country to worship God according to the 
dictates of their own consciences and to make 
everybody else do the same. They were just as 
intolerant of those who differed from them as 
were their less religious brethren down in Vir- 
ginia. They were not Separatists before coming 
here; that is, they had never separated from the 
State Church of England, though most of them 
became separated after coming here. 

A third class of settlers was composed of the 
Pilgrims, who landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620. 
They too demanded complete liberty for them- 
selves, but were not nearly so anxious that others 
should have it. They belonged to the Indepen- 
dents or Congregationalists, who were known as 
Separatists in England, because they separated 
from the English Church. They were also called 
Independents because they believed in the inde- 
pendent form of church government. The term 
Puritan is applied to them only in a general way. 
They were a great people, but they united Church 
and State in an indissoluble pact, taxed people 

[83] 



You and Your Church 



of all faiths to support their church, and enforced 
their claims on all regardless of the conscien- 
tious convictions of these other men. In Con- 
necticut, as late as 1833, they taxed the people as 
a whole to support their church, and they did the 
same in Massachusetts as late as 1834. 

I select several instances from Nathaniel Mor- 
ton's " Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers," show- 
ing the spirit of the colonies both at Salem and 
Plymouth. At Salem two non-conformist minis- 
ters, named Skelton and Higginson, came over 
from England, and were ordained August 6, 
1629. Mr. Higginson was instructed to draw up 
a confession of faith and a covenant, and this is 
one thing he said which I read with almost a 
shudder : 

And because they foresaw that this wilderness might 
be looked upon as a place of liberty and therefore might 
in time be troubled with erroneous spirits, therefore 
they did put in one article into the confession of faith, 
on purpose, about the duty and power of the magistrate 
in matters of religion. 

They intended to be in position to use the civil 
officers in dealing with any one who should ex- 
press the conviction that America was a land of 
religious liberty. That was in Salem, where we 
might hardly expect anything better. The same 
year there came two brothers named Brown, one 
a lawyer, the other a merchant, who insisted on 
holding public meetings and using the Church of 
England services from the Book of Common 
Prayer. But the governor and council passed 

[84] 



The Great Distinctive 



on the matter, and " the governor told them that 
New England was no place for such as they ; and 
therefore he sent them, back to England, at the 
return of the ships the same year." In other 
words, sent them back on the same ship. 

Another instance seems laughable today. On 
August 7, 1667, Rev. John Wilson, pastor of the 
church in Boston, was on his death-bed and was 
asked by those who thought his judgment would 
have special value as he saw the world recede, 
" what he conceived to be those sins amongst us 
which provoked the displeasure of God against 
the country." His reply was that he had often 
thought the three sins were Separation, Anabap- 
tism, and Korahism. The former he did not ex- 
plain, but probably he meant separation from the 
Church of England. Anabaptism he explained 
by saying, " for our neglect of baptizing the chil- 
dren of the church, I think God is provoked by 
it." By Korahism he meant that the people 
would rise up and contradict their ministers and 
teachers. 

But it was strictly necessary to have another — 
the fourth — class of people if God's purpose was 
to be carried out, a people who would regard ab- 
solute religious liberty as necessary for others as 
for themselves and would work just as hard to 
secure it for others. Those were the people to 
bring that distinctive to this new land where it 
had its first real opportunity to domesticate itself. 
There was only one people who could do it. 
Some of them were directed by the invisible 



85 



You and Your Church 



Hand to these shores. At first without in- 
fluence — they did not have enough influence to 
keep out of jail — they had power, the power of 
truth, the power of personality charged with 
truth, the power of the God who had been work- 
ing through them to force that truth on the 
recognition of mankind. They were those same 
Baptists who were the finest force in the Refor- 
mation of the sixteenth century. They were on 
the ground and ready for action. 

One of them had been brought up in the 
Church of England and was of the Puritan type, 
but became a Separatist. He came first to Bos- 
ton, but Boston did not enjoy him. He went to 
Salem, and Salem made it uncomfortable for him, 
for, though he was connected with the State 
Church of the colonies, the big idea was working 
in his soul and he had begun to preach it. He 
went down to Plymouth and worked among the 
Pilgrims a while, but it was uncomfortable both 
for him and for them. He returned to Salem 
and from there was banished in the dead of win- 
ter by the State Church in Boston. 

All the world knows his name — Roger Wil- 
liams. He had found the Puritans of Salem and 
Boston just as intolerant as Archbishop Laud 
of England and he knew that no half-way 
reformation could ever cure the fundamental evil 
which he now recognized. He saw that the union 
of Church and State is unbiblical and unnatural, 
a perversion of the functions of government and 
an assault on the most distinctive thing in man. 

[86] 



The Great Distinctive 



He grasped the principle clearly and asserted 
it fearlessly and consistently. At first his revolt 
against the Congregational Church was not so 
much against its doctrines or its discipline as 
against the principle of a State Church with its 
essential denial of the right of soul-liberty; and 
the revolt was based upon the teachings of nature 
as well as on the teachings of the Scripture. 

His banishment from Salem was decreed by 
the court of " prudent magistrates " in Boston, 
the charge against him being that he taught " that 
the magistrate ought not to punish the breach 
of the first table otherwise than in such a case as 
did disturb the civil peace." The " first table " 
meant religious worship. The decree of punish- 
ment continues, " Whereas Mr. Roger Williams, 
one of the elders of the church of Salem, hath 
broached and divulged new and dangerous opin- 
ions against the authority of magistrates," as 
Morton says, " a disturber of the peace both of 
the church and commonwealth." So Roger Wil- 
liams was banished because he believed that no 
church, or Church and State combined, could 
control a person's private worship of God and 
his obedience to God's commandments. 

Then Roger Williams decided to do a thing 
that was the greatest deed done since the days 
of the apostles, the one thing that humanity had 
been longing for, the one thing that the groan- 
ing centuries had been preparing for, the one 
thing that God had been moving toward. He 
went to a new, unoccupied section of the new 

[87] 



You and Your Church 



world, bought a piece of land from the Indians, 
wrote a constitution for the government of the 
people who should live there, and put into that 
constitution what had never been written into any 
constitution of any government in the history of 
the world before, namely, that everybody should 
have the right under that government to worship 
God according to his own judgment, whether he 
was pagan or Jew or Christian, Christian of any 
denomination, Church of England, Puritan, Con- 
gregational, or of no church. He felt under the 
same obligation to provide that right for others 
as to procure it for himself. No wonder he called 
the name of that place down on Narragansett 
Bay, which he had thus preempted in the name of 
liberty, by the gracious name of " Providence." 
He and the original settlers, most of whom had 
followed him from Salem, entered into a compact 
which read thus : 

We whose names are hereunder written, being desirous 
to inhabit in the town of Providence, do promise to sub- 
mit ourselves in active and passive obedience to all such 
orders or agencies as shall be made for the public good 
of the body in an orderly way by the major consent 
of the present inhabitants, masters of families, incor- 
porated together into a township, and such others whom 
they shall admit into the same, only in civil things. 

This was in 1638. The substance of the com- 
pact was reaffirmed in another document signed 
in 1640. The same principles were embodied in 
the code of laws adopted by the colony in 1647 

[88] 



The Great Distinctive 



and finally incorporated in the Royal Charter 
given by Charles II in 1663 : 

Our Royal will and pleasure is that no person within 
the said colony at any time hereafter shall be in any 
wise molested, punished, disquieted, or called in ques- 
tion for any differences of opinion in matters of re- 
ligion, and do not actually disturb the civil peace of 
the said colony. 

Thus, for the first time in the history of human- 
ity, a state laid its corner-stone in the fundamen- 
tal principles of equal liberty for all. There had 
been toleration in the European countries, but 
toleration and liberty are two separate and dis- 
tinct and conflicting things. 

From Rhode Island it spread to the other 
States, and was finally incorporated in the Con- 
stitution of the United States in the First Amend- 
ment. 

Several instances of the inhumanity which our 
Baptist forefathers suffered from Churches that 
controlled the State may be given. One is the 
case of Henry Dunster, the first president of 
Harvard College. I quote from Doctor Vedder : * 

For preaching against infant baptism this learned, 
godly, and zealous man was indicted by the Grand Jury, 
condemned to suffer a public admonition, and placed 
under bonds for good behavior, finally being compelled 
to resign the presidency of the college of which he had 
been the greatest benefactor. Shortly after he was ar- 
raigned for refusing to have his child baptized, but was 
saved from further persecution by his death. 

1 "A Short History of the Baptists," Phoanix edition, 1897, p. 197. 

[89] 



You and Your Church 



Another instance is found in the case of John 
Clark (who founded the Baptist Church of New- 
port) and Obadiah Holmes. To quote again 
from Doctor Vedder : 

While they were spending the Lord's Day with a 
brother who lived near Lynn it was concluded to have 
religious services in the house. Two constables broke 
in while Mr. Clark was preaching from Revelation 3 : 
10, and the men were haled before the court. For this 
offense they were sentenced to pay, Clark a fine of £20, 
and Holmes one of £30, in default of which they were 
to be " well whipped." A friend paid Clark's fine, and 
he was set at liberty whether he would or not, but 
Holmes was " whipped unmercifully " (the phrase is 
Bancroft's) in the streets of Boston, for the atrocious 
crime of preaching the gospel and of adding thereto 
the denial of infant baptism. 



Just before the lash was laid upon Holmes he 
spoke to the people and said : " Good people all, 
I am now about to be baptized with the baptism 
of affliction that so I may have fellowship with 
my Lord." 

In Virginia they were whipped, fined, and im- 
prisoned. In Connecticut under a State law Bap- 
tists were taxed for the support of the Congre- 
gational Church as late as 1833, an( ^ m Massa- 
chusetts as late as 1834. But after that all the 
laws of all the States were in harmony with 
the principle of complete liberty, upon which the 
government of the United States now rests. It 
should be noted that the Constitution of the 
United States, as originally adopted, did not 

[90] 



The Great Distinctive 



strictly forbid the union of Church and State. 
Our Baptist forefathers voted to adopt it as a 
basis on which to stand while contending for full 
recognition of their distinctive. They knew what 
they wanted, knew what they were about, with 
the result that they brought about an amend- 
ment — the first amendment — to the Constitution, 
which secured religious liberty to all other cit- 
izens as well as for themselves. Here it is : 

Congress shall make no law regarding the estab- 
lishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise 
thereof. 

Had Martin Luther cleansed the church of his 
day from the wrong ideas that governed it, ideas 
which he once condemned but failed to expel — 
infant baptism, union of Church and State, and 
the substitutes for baptism — he would have made 
the Reformation complete on the Continent and 
much more thorough in England. He would 
have furnished a basis for brotherhood which 
might have secured temporal as well as spiritual 
peace for all Europe. There would have been 
no State Churches, and this recent great World 
War could not have taken place. 

Thus we have taken an outline view of the re- 
covery of the great Distinctive. Through all the 
centuries that idea had been at work on the Con- 
tinent of Europe and in England, producing 
great epochs, making great men and women, and 
bringing on world movements. Masson, in his 
life of Milton, wrote : 



[91] 



You and Your Church 



Not to the Church of England, nor to Scottish Pres- 
byterians, nor to English Puritanism at large does the 
honor of the first perception of the full principle of 
liberty of conscience and its first assertion in English 
speech belong. That honor has to be assigned, I be- 
lieve, to the Independents generally and to the Baptists 
in particular. 

John Locke the philosopher says, " Baptists 
were the first and only promoters of absolute 
liberty — just and true liberty, equal and impar- 
tial." Stoughton, in his ecclesiastical history of 
England, says to the Baptists " belongs the honor 
of presenting in this country the first distinct and 
broad plea for liberty of conscience." George 
Bancroft, in his " History of the United States," 
writes, " Freedom of conscience, unlimited free- 
dom of mind, was, from the first, the trophy of 
the Baptists." 

In discussing the work of bringing about the 
complete separation of Church and State Leonard 
Woolsey Bacon, a Congregationalist, says : 

So far as this work was a work of intelligent con- 
viction and religious faith, the chief honor of it must 
be given to the Baptists. Other sects, notably the Pres- 
byterians, had been energetic and efficient in demanding 
their own liberties ; the Friends and the Baptists agreed 
in demanding liberty of conscience and worship and 
equality before the law for all alike. But the active 
labor in this cause was mainly done by the Baptists. 
It is to their consistency and constancy in the warfare 
against the privileges of the powerful " Standing 
Order " of New England and of the moribund estab- 
lishments of the South that we are chiefly indebted 
for the final triumph in this country of that principle 

[92] 



The Great Distinctive 



of the separation of Church and State which is one of 
the largest contributions of the world to civilization 
and to the church universal. 

From America that principle is spreading to all 
the world. The State Churches in Europe are 
falling to pieces as State Churches. A State 
Church will soon be a troubled memory of good 
people, and all will wonder that people professing 
to be Christians ever consented to pervert govern- 
ment and violate the soul's functions in that way. 
The people whom, God used to bring about that 
state of things is the people called Baptists. Let 
us thank him for the honor of making such a 
contribution to humanity. 



[93] 



VI 

THE GREAT OBJECTIVE 

What is the goal or objective of that great dis- 
tinctive which you found on coming into the 
church? Whatever that objective is, it corre- 
sponds to the nature of the distinctive and is 
providentially designed to be attained. It fol- 
lows, as a matter of course, that those who are 
keeping the distinctive whole and are applying 
it to human life, must be aware that it has such 
a goal, must see it clearly, and must move for- 
ward toward it with intelligent, devoted, deter- 
mined purpose. 

1. What Is that Objective? 

It is nothing less than this: That whole dis- 
tinctive must become the possession of the whole 
world, not only as a theory, but as a practice and 
a habit, not a part but the whole of the distinctive, 
not the possession of a part but of the whole 
world. The whole world must have it whole. 

Nothing less than this will do justice to the 
idea itself, which is a universal idea and as well 
adapted to one race as to another, to each person 
in that race as well as any other person, unless 
a person is a criminal or abnormal. 

Nothing less than that will do justice to man- 
kind, for it is founded on that human nature 

[94] 



The Great Objective 



which is common to all human beings. All need 
to have that distinctive, they can not get along 
and be men in the highest degree of development 
without it. 

Nothing less than that will do justice to Christ 
who endorsed that distinctive, embodied it in 
himself, commanded us to observe it, and gave 
it a new birth into human life in giving us the 
spirit of brotherhood by our acceptance of him. 

Nothing less will do justice to the comprehen- 
sive purpose of God that it should be so, or to 
the minute and powerful agencies he has been 
employing to bring it about. He has purposed 
and planned and arranged that all men every- 
where should see and accept and act on that dis- 
tinctive. 

2. Who Are to Carry that Distinctive On to Its 
Natural and Destined Objective? 

Some body of people must, and evidently it 
must be that body that has already grasped it, 
lived it, died for it, kept it alive, and given it to 
the rest of the world so far as it has as yet been 
given to the world. 

They are the people to do it, or to lead in it, 
for two reasons. One reason is that the original 
commission under which they have worked up 
to the present time has not been canceled and, 
with all the training and experience they now 
have, they should be even more competent than 
they have been at any time in the past to do the 
work. 



[95] 



You and Your Church 



The other reason is that they are the only peo- 
ple who, as yet, have the idea whole, except as 
some of the smaller bodies of Christians may 
have come to understand it in later years. 

For example : 

( 1 ) No church has it whole which administers 
baptism as a means or condition of salvation, 
even though the form of baptism should be cor- 
rect. 

(2) No church has it whole which uses the 
substitutes that arose in the place of baptism, even 
though they may not regard baptism as essential 
to salvation, and may use it as a method of pro- 
fessing faith in Christ or a form of consecration 
to Christ. But the fact remains that the substitutes 
owe their origin to the pagan idea that baptism 
is a saving rather than a symbolic ordinance, and 
the continued use of them not only does violence 
to the great idea which Christ put into baptism 
but perpetuates the superstition which prompted 
the invention of the substitutes and thus became 
the first interference with the fundamental prin- 
ciple of the equal rights of all to deal directly 
with God, the principle of soul-liberty, as it has 
been rightly called. 

(3) No church that practises infant baptism 
can have it whole, even though such church bap- 
tizes the child as a form of consecrating it, a 
thing that Jesus never did command, a thing 
which owes its origin to the idea that baptism 
was necessary to the salvation of the child and 
that the child would be sent to hell unless it had 



96 



The Great Objective 



been " made a child of God " through baptism. 
In many cases parents will say that they do not 
regard baptism as necessary to the child's salva- 
tion, but how often we detect the remains of the 
old superstition when we hear some one say, 
" No, I don't exactly consider it necessary, but 
I'll feel safer." That is an added interference 
with the deepest function of the child's soul, its 
right and obligation to make its own choice and 
render its own obedience when it comes to the 
time for such action. When such a child does 
make that choice and ask to have an opportunity 
to obey Christ in that ordinance and is told that 
he has already been baptized, he may justly reply : 
" I never did it. My baptism was something done 
to me without my knowledge or consent and not 
something done by me as my own act of obedi- 
ence to the wishes of my Lord. You have taken 
it out of my hands, and you might as well take 
my faith and my love for him out of my hands." 
(4) No church has that distinctive whole 
when the local congregations are subjected to an 
order of officials above them or to any group of 
local congregations organized to control the 
groups. In the churches which do not recognize 
the right of a group called a local church to abso- 
lute self-government, our distinctive is impossible 
in the nature of the case. In the prelatical and 
presbyter ial forms of government the autonomy 
of the local group may be recognized as nearly as 
possible, yet it is not wholly recognized and can 
not be. 



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You and Your Church 



(5) No church has that distinctive whole that 
has ever been a State Church in any other coun- 
try, unless it first reorganizes itself on the Biblical 
plan and repudiates its unbiblical and unnatural 
alliance with that State. Nor can any church 
have it whole that has organic connection with 
any other church which is or has been a State 
Church in any country at any time, unless it has 
changed its organization to conform to the Bib- 
lical and normal type and has repudiated its un- 
sound connections. I confess I have never heard 
of any such church repudiating its past history or 
its present connections. 

For these two reasons — our success in doing 
it in the past and our present qualifications for 
it — it is very definitely the task of Baptists to put 
the whole world in possession of our distinctive 
whole with all of its implications. All we can 
say now is that part of the world has it whole, 
part has it in part, and part has it not at all. 

3. What Does the Distinctive "Whole" Mean? 

(1) The distinctive must be given in connec- 
tion with the whole gospel of which it is a vital 
part. That means world missions, world evan- 
gelization. In starting modern missions it does 
not seem inconsequential that God chose William 
Carey as its outstanding leader and champion, 
for, as a Baptist, he knew just what this funda- 
mental thing was. In the part that American 
Christians took in starting world missions there 
was a most remarkable providence in the conver- 
ts ] 



The Great Objective 



sion of Adoniram Judson, the first great Amer- 
ican missionary, from his inadequate understand- 
ing of the great distinctive to a complete ac- 
ceptance of it, on his way to his mission field in 
Burma, and his alignment with the Baptist cause 
on arriving at Calcutta. So this distinctive be- 
longs to the whole gospel scheme, in fact, is at 
the bottom of it, and must always be put in its 
vital and fundamental place. 

(2) It means that all of its implications must 
be recognized, that it be free from all of those 
interferences which it has encountered in the his- 
tory of the Christian religion, which I have 
pointed out and which must be clearly perceived 
and completely discarded. 

4. The Twofold Task 

(1) We must induce people to exercise that 
most fundamental function of the soul, namely, 
the power of choice, and act on that wonderful 
privilege which every one has of dealing per- 
sonally with God through his own arrangements 
in Christ. It is not enough to show people that 
each one has as much right as any other one to 
come to Christ, and it is not enough that any man 
shall be able to say, " I have as much right to 
accept the Saviour as the minister has," but he 
must actually do it. We cannot force him, nor 
make him a Christian without his choice, but we 
have a most sacred and fascinating duty and 
privilege of urging that choice on everybody and 
helping each one to make it. 

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You and Your Church 



(2) We must help them, one and all, to get 
adjusted, as equals, to each other in all the forms 
of the relational life, in harmony with the funda- 
mental principle which we have been consider- 
ing — in the Church, in the home, in the com- 
munity, in the State, in the world. 

This means that each individual, with all his 
individualism, is protected, and, at the same time, 
is socialized according to his own structure and 
according to the structure of the others. His in- 
dividualism is retained unimpaired, and all of it 
is socialized at the same time. 

5. The Three Fields 

(1) Among the unevangelized. In giving 
them the gospel we must be sure to give them this 
element of the message. It assures them their 
right status and also gives them the sense of re- 
sponsibility. Every one brought to Christ in our 
mission work at home and abroad must be taught 
this truth. It is required by the other truths 
taught in order to complete them. It also re- 
quires all those other truths as its complement. 

(2) Among the unconverted at home. It is 
necessary in order that men may feel their re- 
sponsibility. No one may take it from them. 
Political democracy is made intelligent thereby. 

(3) Among those at home and abroad who, 
though evangelized and educated and usefid 
Christians, are violating, or ignoring, in some one 
or more respects, that great distinctive which is 
so essential to the wholeness of each individual 

[100] 



The Great Objective 



and to the democratization of all people. There 
are people of culture, piety, influence, usefulness, 
who are mightily effective in the Christianization 
of the world, but have not that distinctive whole. 

Why put them in possession of that distinctive 
whole, when they are doing so much good., are 
such good people, and presumably are able to take 
perfectly good care of themselves? There are 
very clear and cogent reasons why we should 
do so. 

First, if that distinctive is a truth, then it is 
the duty of those who are in advance of others in 
understanding it, to turn it over to them in the 
degree in which they are willing to accept it, and 
to use every means to induce them to accept it. 
We hold it as stewards and have no right to the 
exclusive possession of it. We bestow it or we 
betray it. 

Secondly, it is essential to the wholeness of 
those Christian people who have not yet grasped 
it, and, if it is possible to aid them, it is our duty 
to do so. 

Thirdly, it is essential to the completeness of 
their work in the world. Their converts may 
have all else and lack something of this idea. In 
that case they are so far defective. We should 
want to aid our Christian friends to become as 
nearly perfect Christians as they can and, there- 
fore, we must give them this truth if they are 
willing to accept it. 

Fourthly, it is essential to that church union 
of which we have heard so much of late and 



101 



You and Your Church 



which we are all anxious to have. All Christians 
are anxious to have an expression of the unity 
of all believers. But distinguish between unity 
and union. There is unity between all Chris- 
tians already. They are one in Christ because 
of the new birth, not because of anything they 
may or may not do or have done since being 
born again. Whatever profession they may or 
may not make, they are taken one by one into 
the body of Christ as fast as they are born again. 
One may be born again in the heart of Africa 
and may never have heard of any one else than 
the one who pointed him to Christ, yet he is in the 
body of Christ the mpment he is in Christ, and 
he is in Christ the moment he accepts Christ as 
his Saviour. Unity is internal, it is unity of the 
spirit. 

Union is external, of the letter. It consists, 
first, of joining the church and then of adjusting 
the churches to each other as well as may be. 
The prayer of Jesus, " That they all may be one, 
even as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that 
they also may be in us " (John 17 : 21), is an- 
swered in the case of every one who is saved at 
all. To say that the answer to that prayer has 
been waiting all these centuries till churches can 
get into organic relations with each other, is to 
display astonishing lack of even rudimentary 
knowledge of the Christian life. 

We do have some degree of Christian union. 
We have it in our cooperative efforts at many 
tasks, like the abolition of the liquor traffic and 

[102] 



The Great Objective 



social evils and the establishment of better social 
and domestic conditions. But we have not 
church union. That is a matter of arrangement. 
It is external, voluntary. It is desirable, if a right 
union. 

What are the conditions on which church union 
is possible? 

One condition is that the union shall be funda- 
mental and not merely superficial : therefore, that 
it shall not interfere with the workings of that 
distinctive, because that would be an interference 
with the proper functioning of the human soul. 
All human governments in the future must be of 
such nature as to permit every soul within their 
control to function normally. There can be no 
vital, permanent church union if the composite 
church retains any of these interferences with 
that distinctive or any of the ideals or habits 
that grow out of such interferences. 

Another condition of church union is that the 
composite church shall conform to the unmistak- 
able teachings of the word of God. Such union 
cannot be built on known departures from the 
teachings of that word. 

Thus we have four reasons for doing our best 
to put the other Christian bodies in possession of 
that distinctive in its wholeness. 

We are really appealing to their own interests 
in asking them to accept it. Here are some of 
those interests: 

Their desire for wholeness, completeness, in 
other words, integrity. 



[103] 



You and Your Church 



Their interest in efficiency. If they incor- 
porated our distinctive unimpaired in their teach- 
ing and practice, they would be much more ef- 
ficient than they have ever been, and we know 
how very efficient some of those Christian bodies 
are. For it actually matches the nature and the 
needs of every human being with whom and for 
whom they work. It fits in with the maturing 
thought of the day, which is manifestly turned 
toward democracy both in the State and in the 
Church. 

Their interest in the effectiveness of the evan- 
gelical appeal. The two ordinances have a power- 
ful instructional value. Baptism tells the great 
fact of Christ's death for our -sins and his resur- 
rection for our justification. There is need to keep 
that fact alive today as never before. The success 
of that appeal depends on awakening a sense of 
sin in the heart of the sinner that will lead him to 
accept Christ, and baptism also tells of regenera- 
tion, the death to sin and resurrection to a new 
life. There is need to keep the coming resur- 
rection before all, and baptism proclaims that. 
The Lord's Supper also tells how we are utterly 
dependent on Christ for the sustenance of the 
new life. That symbol reenforces the one which 
baptism gives us. Many a soul has been con- 
victed of his need of Christ by seeing those truths 
pictured in that burial " with Christ by baptism," 
and the ensuing resurrection from the liquid 
grave. Baptist success in the past has been 
largely due to a frank proclamation of that whole 

[104] 



The Great Objective 



cluster of truths, and they are the truths that will 
make democracy safe for the world. 

Their interest in church union. We also are 
anxious for church union, and we should devise 
some means of appealing to the other churches 
in the interest of union. There is one definite 
thing we can say: that, if they will accept this, 
they will be in line for union, for we cannot unite 
on departures from God's word. It is not bap- 
tism alone, but the thing that lies behind baptism 
and requires it, together with that cluster of 
truths that belong with the holding of that truth. 
We should ask them to accept it for union's 
sake. It might not at once bring on union, but 
it would be at least one step in that direction, 
and the next step would come in the right way. 

6. Some Obstinate Difficulties 

(i) Difficulties Without. 

One is tradition. The ideas and practices of 
the denominations have been handed down for 
generations and even for centuries, and tradition 
has its own peculiar influence over all of us. 

Another difficulty is habit. After practising 
sprinkling and pouring and infant baptism for 
centuries, no church will find it an easy task to 
change its habits. 

Another is prejudice. Prejudice does not char- 
acterize one group of people alone. All of us 
are prejudiced. In the past we Baptists and 
those other bodies have fought many a contro- 
versial battle, and the echoes of the noise of 

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You and Your Church 



battle linger with us. Our own prejudices as 
well as theirs may be in the way, for we may 
have denied to them the respect and fraternal 
regard they are entitled to, and we may have 
wrongly questioned the sincerity with which they 
hold to their own views. We might have as 
much difficulty in going to them in the right 
spirit as in finding the desired spirit in them when 
we go. 

Still another difficulty is the spirit of contro- 
versy rather than of cooperation. Whatever we 
do in putting our brethren of other denomina- 
tions into possession of our distinctive must be 
done as friends and not as foes, in the spirit of 
comity rather than of conflict; it must be with a 
passion for fraternity rather than victory, a de- 
sire to promote truth rather than win triumph. 

Another difficulty is found in the institutions 
that are definitely and purposely constructed on 
principles exactly opposed to our distinctive, 
whose very existence depends on protecting their 
devotees from the entrance of this truth, so dear 
to us and so vital to humanity, into their lives. 
Every spiritual tyranny requires in its subjects 
the " closed mind." The historic, gigantic, ag- 
gressive, and unsleeping instance of this is the 
Roman Catholic Church, whose head is the pope 
at Rome. That is the institution which was the 
outgrowth of the original perversions that took 
place in the New Testament Church. Through 
the ages it has developed and perpetuated all of 
those interferences with the workings of our dis- 

[106] 



The Great Objective 



tinctive. Beginning with Constantine in the 
fourth century, it dominated the civil government 
of Rome and then of the other European nations, 
till its yoke was partially thrown off by Germany 
and then by Great Britain in the sixteenth cen- 
tury. But it claims the right to wield all tem- 
poral power over all the nations of the earth as 
well as spiritual power over all of its followers, 
as races and as individuals, because the pope is 
God's vice-gerent, or assistant ruler, over man- 
kind. 

That means that no one is allowed to think for 
himself or act for himself, that the individual 
is merged in the whole and the whole church is 
in its officials. It is the destruction of the in- 
dividual's liberty; it is his absolute subordina- 
tion to this self -constituted master of mankind. 
That church has withheld religious liberty from 
every country that it has ruled and has slaugh- 
tered millions of people who have tried to exer- 
cise their inherent right to think and to deal per- 
sonally with God. The Roman Church has kept 
people in ignorance and superstition. The na- 
tions that it has ruled for centuries are the most 
blindly ignorant of the nations that are called 
civilized. Democracy in religion is impossible 
where the Catholic Church has the controlling in- 
fluence. The Church is above the Bible, and the 
pope, through his priests, claims divine power. 
The reformation of this Church is impossible, for 
it is a malformation from top to bottom and is 
built on a false idea, so that the structure that has 



[107 



You and Your Church 



grown up out of that idea can never be recon- 
structed. Its destruction under the influence of 
truth is its only right destiny. 

That system is unchangeable in its hostility 
to the distinctive which we hold, and it holds its 
sway by appeal to superstition, ignorance, fear, 
love of ease, pride of power. Many of its de- 
votees are simple-minded and conscientious, but 
their leaders are not free from responsibility for 
their condition. 

There are other tyrannies that require the 
" closed mind," and they offer us an almost in- 
superable difficulty in our task of reaching their 
devotees with this truth. But in the degree in 
which we saturate the public mind with the truth 
we shall be lessening the success of their propa- 
ganda. 

(2) Difficulties Within Our Body. Problems 
need not discourage us. A problem is a sign of 
life and opportunity. " Youth is rich in unsolved 
problems." When we cease to have problems, we 
are dead. Then, too, we have always had prob- 
lems and have always had some success with 
them. 

Here are four of our problems : 

First, that of liberty and leadership. The pri- 
mary need of any cause is a leader, but leadership 
has usually grown into rulership and has lessened 
the individual liberty of those who are led. Yet 
leadership, in spite of its perils, is the greatest 
need of a democracy. Philip of Macedon said, 
"It is better to have an army of deer led by a 

[108] 



The Great Objective 



lion than an army of lions led by a deer." An 
autocracy can get along without leaders much 
more easily than a democracy, for autocracy cen- 
ters in a ruling family or in institutions with 
habits and traditions that hold the subjects under 
control. Our churches are not carried to success 
by autocratic officials, or by an infallible institu- 
tion, or by mystical ceremonials, but by leaders 
chosen by the people themselves, who remain the 
equals of the leaders and to whom those leaders 
are responsible. 

We have the double problem of discovering 
our leaders, then of preparing them, recognizing 
them, and following them. The double danger of 
not securing adequate leadership and of allowing 
leadership to develop into tyranny has always 
made us watchful. Let us bear in mind that we 
have leaders in embryo among us and that we 
shall find them if we follow the injunction of our 
Saviour to pray, to watch, to know them when 
we see them, to provide for their training, and to 
cooperate with them. 

Secondly, there is the problem of democracy 
and discipline. All discipline is self -discipline. I 
read an editorial in a Boston paper in the early 
days of the Great War, entitled " The German 
Way and the American Way." It said that when 
the people of Germany need anything, their rulers 
think it out with scientific accuracy and pass it 
on to them with instructions to put it into effect. 
That is all, but that is enough. In America when 
the people need anything, somebody thinks up 

[109] 



You and Your Church 



something and begins to talk. Then he is 
promptly assailed from all quarters, and a free 
and full discussion is carried on amid the noise 
of battle. There is only one thing that they are 
agreed on in the beginning, and that is that the 
majority shall settle it. The battle will rage till 
the idea seems defeated, but ultimately something 
will be decided upon by a good working majority, 
and the question is settled. As a result of that 
struggle a certain thing is achieved, namely, the 
education of each one of the participants in the 
battle. They have become men and not machines. 
It may be added that they often think all the more 
of each other because of the conflict of opinion. 

A democracy offers the very best opportunity 
for self-discipline. 

Thirdly, there is the problem of spirituality 
and culture. During the centuries of agitation 
the instruments of culture were in the hands of 
the established church, and the advocates of 
liberty were not always well trained. The preach- 
ers and priests of the established church were 
worldly and often irreligious. That led our Bap- 
tist forefathers to suspect the piety and honesty 
of those who had been trained in the schools. 
The result was that we had many great men, 
great as leaders, great in their self -discipline, 
great in meeting the demands of the times, who 
were only self-educated, and the converts to our 
faith were largely won from the plain people. 
For these two reasons the necessity of culture 
was not felt at first, but that necessity at last 

[110] 



The Great Objective 



forced itself into recognition more and more. 
There Were wise men among the leaders, who 
agitated for institutions of learning, primarily 
to train the leaders. More than a century and 
a half ago in America they began to feel the de- 
mand most keenly. It was a problem, and they 
met it by founding our Baptist institutions of 
learning on the North American Continent — 
Brown University, in 1764: Colby, 181 5; Col- 
gate, 18 19; Shurtleff, 1827; Georgetown, 1829; 
Acadia, 1838; and the others in due time. Our 
theological seminaries sprang up, beginning with 
Colgate, 1820; Newton, 1825; the others follow- 
ing. 

We are hearing the call for the better equip- 
ment of the schools which we now have and for 
the establishment of other schools in our growing 
mission fields. As our fathers met the problem 
of culture in their day to the best of their ability, 
it seems hardly possible that we shall be relatively 
less enthusiastic and generous in perfecting the 
schools we now have and in establishing others 
that we need. We have greater wealth and 
greater ability. We have a great cause and a 
great call. The problem seems easy of solution. 

We have already produced men of letters — and 
women of letters too — and have been comfort- 
able and successful in communities of social re- 
finement and intellectual culture. If real spirit- 
uality were incompatible with the very highest 
culture of the soul in mental, esthetic, and social 
power, it would be a reflection on our Maker. 

[mi 



You and Your Church 



Fourthly, there is the problem of properly so- 
cialising the individual Each individual Chris- 
tian must become adjusted to all others of the 
group to which he belongs. Two requirements 
are imperative. First of all, his individualism 
must be kept whole, his personal values recog- 
nized and retained unimpaired. His personality 
demands this. The rights of his soul must be 
respected. Again, the whole of his individualism 
must be socialized and made useful in the struc- 
ture of which he is a part; not a part, but all of 
his individual values must be conserved and so- 
cialized. To accomplish that is one of the finest 
of the fine arts. The group forms a whole, a sort 
of personality made up of all the other personal- 
ities, but each one must be perfectly intact as if 
he were not connected with others. 

The socialization of the individual in the 
church is essential to the peace and the power 
of the church. Sometimes what we call social 
culture of a high order is required, but it is a 
deadly thing if it destroys individual strength 
and initiative. Cooperative work is essential, and 
seems more so now than ever before, but it is 
all the more effective for being chosen rather than 
coerced. Our Baptist problem is similar to the 
problem of the individual in every democracy. 
If this is impossible in the Church, it is impos- 
sible in the State, and civil democracy fails along 
with religious democracy. But it is not a failure, 
for God has written in the structure of man, in 
the instincts of man, and in the sublime history 

[112] 



The Great Objective 



of the past centuries, that individuality comes to 
its best when it is socialized. This is the era of 
team-work, and our Biblical and normal individ- 
ualism is the best equipment we can have for the 
best team-work ever done. 

7. Perils 

There are three perils in the path of our effort 
which we must look frankly in the face, 

(i) After so many centuries of conflict with 
Christian and non-Christian people in behalf of 
a principle that was just as essential to them as 
to ourselves, we naturally long for rest and may 
become " at ease in Zion " ; but it will be a stimu- 
lus to us to remember that we will have to do it 
all over again if we relax our devotion. Rome is 
ever watchful and, while she has great skill in 
adapting herself to changing conditions, her pur- 
pose is exactly the same as it was a thousand 
years ago, and that purpose is to control the re- 
ligious thought and worship of the people in the 
interest of her world-wide supremacy. 

(2) After a degree of success in establishing 
religious liberty on the North American Conti- 
nent as a distributing-point, from which it is 
spreading over all the world till State Churches 
are giving way before it, we may feel that others 
have it in such a degree that we may be relieved 
of the responsibility for further championship of 
it. But, as already pointed out, no other body of 
any size has the idea in its wholeness, with all its 
implications, and it would be lost again if we 

h [113] 



You and Your Church 



should surrender its championship to any one 
else in the world. 

(3) The spirit of the age is one of cooperation 
rather than conflict, and a very commendable 
spirit it is so far as it is wise and conscientious. 
There is a call everywhere for combination, for 
union, and especially for church union. Here 
we find one of our perils. It would be very easy 
to form a union which would ruin us in one of 
three ways, by eliminating some one feature of 
our distinctive, or by introducing some one of the 
historic interferences with the working of that 
distinctive, or by requiring us to keep silence 
about it. Any one of these courses would mean 
disaster, and God would have to rais v e up another 
people to do it all over again. 

If we unite in one combined church, that 
church would require some form of organiza- 
tion. Which form would it take? If it is either 
the prelatical or presbyterial form, we give up 
our distinctive, and it is lost to the world. In 
that case we would be traitors to the providence 
of God, to our own history, and to humanity. 

The combined church would require the cere- 
mony which is called baptism. Will it be actual 
baptism, or one of the two substitutes that have 
arisen in its place? If the union church takes the 
latter position, our distinctive is gone. 

The combined church would have requirements 
for membership. Shall it require that a person 
accept Christ for himself before becoming a mem- 
ber of the church, or shall the person be received 

[114] 



The Great Objective 



into the church by infant baptism without his 
knowledge or consent? If the latter, then our 
distinctive is gone. 

If we make an entangling alliance at this time 
after having done so much to restore an essential 
to its place among Christian people, we would be 
cast away, and God would have to raise up some 
other body of people to do for the world what we 
now, after such extraordinary success, would re- 
fuse to do. 

As a member of one of the churches of the 
denomination which holds such a cherished truth 
and is striving toward such a fascinating goal, 
you are one of the glorious company of victors. 
Know that objective, set your face steadily to- 
ward it, and keep moving onward " till the goal 
you win." 



[115] 



VII 

INSTRUMENTALITIES AND AGENCIES 

When you joined the church you found in- 
strumentalities and agencies already devised for 
accomplishing its mission to its members and to 
the outside world. They were worked out in 
experience and may not have been perfect. In 
fact, there was at once opened up to you an op- 
portunity and an obligation to improve all the 
methods in use by the church. One of the bene- 
fits of our democracy is that each one may use 
his own ideas and add to those that are already 
at work. Methods are shaped by the combined 
wisdom of the group and may be constantly re- 
shaped to fit constantly growing enterprises. 

1. Local Work 

The local work of your church is fourfold : 
(i) It is evangelistic. That is simply saying 
that, when you become a Christian, you want to 
help some one else find Christ. I take that as the 
first work of the church, to be preceded, of 
course, by teaching and all the other means of 
getting the truth of Christ before the people and 
into their minds. There are three ways of doing 
this work : through the appeal of the preacher in 
his preaching; through the application of the 

r lie! 



Instrumentalities and Agencies 

truth in the teaching service of the church, the 
Sunday school; through the personal efforts of 
the members, including, of course, the minister. 
Your church is pledged to win to Christ every 
one within the sphere of its influence. As long as 
a single unconverted person is within its reach, 
that sort of work is unfinished and is therefore 
imperative. 

(2) It is a disciplinary work, that is, it is a 
work of making disciples in the fullest sense. 
The church disciplines by educating its members. 
It has some sort of educational system, even 
though it may be only a loosely organized Sun- 
day school. Classes in the Bible at the Sunday 
school; classes in missions, whether at Sunday 
school or separate from it ; and classes in methods 
of study and teaching and work are simply im- 
perative in these days of experts in all lines of 
work and study. The church trains not only by 
education in the Bible and missions and methods 
of work, but by assigning work to the members 
and aiding them in the actual doing of it. That 
work may be individual or cooperative; it may 
be wholly within the church, or largely out in the 
community, or in a more distant part of the world 
field. 

It also disciplines by watch-care, one over the 
other, the older helping the younger by example 
and suggestion and companionship, the more 
mature putting their strength at the service of 
the weaker. It disciplines by its ideals. It dis- 
ciplines by guidance, correction, appreciation. 

["1171 



You and Your Church 



(3) The church coordinates its members in 
the great enterprise of putting the whole world in 
possession of its Saviour and King, whose right it 
is to rule over the world and over every person 
in it. That will include local work and com- 
munity work of several kinds. 

Every church must have its organized school 
studying the Bible and missions and the history 
of Christianity and all the methods of work that 
have commended themselves to its intelligence. 
If your church has not such a school, it may be 
you are the one to take the initiative in it or to 
suggest and help establish it. 

(4) A fourth enterprise of your church is the 
uplift of your whole community, not only 
through the influence of its members on it, but 
by means of special effort in Christianizing its 
laws, caring for the needy, educating its citizens, 
and driving out its evils. 

2. The Wider Work 

1. Your church bears its part in the coopera- 
tive work of all the churches of the whole denom- 
ination. It is one of a group of churches forming 
a District Association, which meets annually. 
That Association has no authority over the 
churches. On the contrary, it is the creature of 
the churches, and they have complete authority 
over it. It surveys the field occupied by the 
churches composing it, hears reports of what is 
done by each church, takes an outlook upon the 
whole State or Province in which it is located, 



[118] 



Instrumentalities and Agencies 

and upon the nation and the world as well, out- 
lines suggestive programs for work in the local 
churches, and stimulates them with information 
and hints as to methods of work and as to their 
vital fellowship in that work. 

For each State or Province there is an or- 
ganization which serves for its field a purpose 
similar to that of the District Association, while, 
for a whole nation, or a large part of it, there is 
a still larger organization. The value of these 
organizations is that they preserve the voluntary 
principle and add to its force the stimulus of 
combined wisdom and voluntary fellowship. Of 
course human nature is so imperfect that a more 
authoritative control over the churches by some 
overhead body might get larger results at the out- 
set, but not in the outcome. 

Note that these larger bodies promote world- 
wide missions, education in each State or Prov- 
ince or nation or mission field, and benevolence of 
various kinds, including social service in some 
form. Get the denominational records and re- 
ports of work done over the whole world. 

(2) The wider work has reference to our co- 
laborers of the other denominations who are do- 
ing a work corresponding to our own. Our re- 
lation to them must be that of sympathy and 
good-will. It will at times be a relation of active 
cooperation. Community work may often re- 
quire not only the individual cooperation of 
Christian people of all the denominations in the 
community, but actual church cooperation, as in 

[119] 



You and Your Church 



supporting institutions like the Y. M. C. A., the 
Y. W. C. A., the Red Cross, homes for unfor- 
tunates of different classes, temperance move- 
ments, community- wide evangelism, etc. In 
opening new missions we should consider the 
work being done in a given place by those bodies, 
and should be wise enough to spend our money 
where those most needy will get the benefit of 
it. All this can and must be done with a view 
to fulfilling our mission to give the world the 
whole truth as we see it. We need never be un- 
true to our principles in such work. 



[120 



PART III 
YOUR PART 



WHAT YOU ARE TO DO 

You must have a part in this varied and am- 
bitious work of your church, both its local and 
general work. In joining you accepted its scheme 
of work, with such improvements as you and 
others may be able to make in it. Not only a 
part, but your own personal, specific part must 
you have in it. 

1. Why? 

( i ) You will suffer if you do not You will 
suffer in your own estimate of yourself. You are 
adapted by the new Christian nature and 
prompted by your own Christian impulses to 
have a part in that work and, if you fail to do so 
for any reason whatsoever, you will have an in- 
curable discontent with yourself. You will often 
say to yourself : " I'm the one who made a cove- 
nant with some good people and am not keeping 
it. Worse still, my covenant expresses profound 
and essential relations with those people, and I 
am living in violation of them." The conscious- 
ness of not being true to your pledges will cause 
you pain. 

You will be unhappy if you fail to do your 
part. 

[123] 



You and Your Church 



The one who drifts 

And never lifts 

A burden from the dust, 

Can never know the heartfelt glow 

Which yonder reaper must. 

It will mean disease of the soul — low spirits, 
sour temper, wounded pride, heartache, fatty de- 
generation of the heart, torpid emotions, irregu- 
lar action of the vital processes, wrong blood 
pressure, bad blood, cold heart, religious dys- 
pepsia, bad tongue (very bad!). You will be a 
trouble-maker. You will be apt to become what 
is called a grouch. 

You will suffer in the estimation of others. In 
selecting those on whom they can always depend, 
they will pass you by as not dependable. They 
may even apply to you the repulsive term 
" slacker," and do so in perfect justice. Your 
reputation among your brethren is an asset far 
too valuable to give up. 

(2) The work will suffer. You will lower 
the moral tone of the church. Your coldness 
will lower the temperature of the whole body. 
You will lessen its energy and efficiency, for, in 
carrying you, it will carry a useless weight and 
thereby use up power that is needed in doing 
something useful and constructive. You will 
lessen the spiritual value of the church as well 
as its vitality. You will compel the church to 
carry in its system so much undigested matter, 
which is sure to produce in some degree a toxic 
condition. Spiritual disease will afflict the body, 

[124] 



What You Are to Do 



and the germ center of that disease will be — 
you. 

(3) Some good people will suffer also, for 
there are in the church generous souls who will 
do more than their share in order to do your 
neglected share. Some work will go forever 
undone unless you do it, something that no one 
will know about, no one can get into contact with, 
no one can really do, but you. 

(4) Others outside the church will suffer. 
The volume of the church's work will be lessened 
and its quality injured. The community will get 
less than it is entitled to. Some people will be 
neglected. The evangelistic, the benevolent, and 
the disciplinary work will suffer, and all who 
would benefit by your efforts will lose through 
your failure to function as a covenant-keeping 
and duty-doing member. 

2. How? 

I said that you are to have a part, and that 
must be your own personal part. 

It means two things. One is that you must do 
many things by yourself and of yourself, such as 
giving your own share of the money to be ex- 
pended and doing the tasks that you alone can do. 
There are opportunities that you alone can see 
and you alone can seize. There are tasks that you 
alone can undertake and perform, words to speak, 
deeds to do, a personal touch to give that no one 
other than yourself can even think of, much 
less do. 



[125 



You and Your Church 



It also means that you are to do your part of 
the common tasks in the team-work which is so 
necessary. Perhaps you will furnish the idea, 
or the plan, or the directive oversight, and there- 
by make the work of others possible and effective, 
or you may work at some humble part of the task 
which your talents fit you for, while others work 
in the limelight and in the positions of promi- 
nence. 

The team-work in which you are to engage is 
team-work with the whole body, as when you put 
your share of money into the whole sum, or teach 
in the church school, or engage in some special 
campaign. 

It will also be team-work in smaller groups, 
or small communities, or in a small body of 
officers. 

Or it may be team-work with some one person, 
as Peter and John, Paul and Barnabas, Paul and 
Timothy, Luther and Melancthon, and hundreds 
of teams of two have done. Two ones added 
make two, but place the two ones side by side 
and they made eleven. You and the other man 
by your team-work multiply each other, you com- 
plement, complete each other. 

You are to have a part in every activity of the 
church. You must be an evangelist, a private, 
personal, persistent, loving evangelist. That is 
the highest work of all. It involves so much on 
your part — knowledge of the person whom you 
wish to lead to Christ and an understanding of 
his needs; knowledge of the truths he must have; 



[126] 



What You Are to Do 



knowledge of the way to state the truths and to 
make the appeal. It involves prayer to God and 
cooperation with the Spirit of God, for it is he 
that worketh in you both to will and to do his 
work, and it is he that convicts men of their need 
of Christ. In winning a person to Christ you 
bring more to him than you can in anything else 
you ever can do for him. You bring Christ and 
all the wonders of the reign of God in the soul. 
The blessings you secure to that person never 
cease to ennoble him. You will often need 
the help of some other Christian in winning 
others. 

When you take part your growth is more com- 
plete and more rapid and your joy is greater. It 
is like the joy that Jesus felt, as it is said, " Who 
for the joy that was set before him, endured the 
cross, despising the shame." It was the joy he 
felt amidst the agonies of Calvary as he thought 
of the millions he would save from sin by suffer- 
ing on the cross. You will help to put that sort 
of spirit into the whole church. 

You will have your part in the educational 
work of the church. There is a place for you, 
and it is your own personal, peculiar place — in 
the Sunday school as a pupil or officer or teacher. 
You will have your place in the missionary work 
of the church, in the missionary studies, and in 
the missionary giving. 

We speak of the benevolent work of the 
church, its contributions to the needy, its ministry 
to the sick and the troubled. Your part in those 

[127] 



You and Your Church 



forms of work is awaiting you. It will be your 
own personal work, your part in the organized 
work of the church. 

It will require study and prayer, a ready mind, 
and a loving heart. 

3. Some Suggestions 

( i ) Gugsp our great distinctive clearly so that 
you will always know when it is disregarded or 
imperiled. 

(2) Be able to explain it to any one, giving a 
reason for the conviction that is in you. 

(3) Be sure to have our total objective before 
you all the time. 

(4) Hold to the distinctive and aim at the ob- 
jective in a large and fraternal rather than in a 
small and jealous spirit. 

(5) Accept your responsibility for the preser- 
vation of this distinctive and the attainment of 
our objective. 

(6) Understand the complete set of gospel 
truths to which this belongs. 

(7) Be ready to undertake the first task that is 
offered to you. 

(8) Be on the lookout for special work that 
you alone can do. 

(9) Familiarize yourself with the work that 
others are doing, in order to find where you can 
assist. 

(10) Do not allow your devotion to the work 
of the church to be affected by circumstances 
without or by your own moods. 

[1281 



What You Are to Do 



( 1 1 ) See how much you can do and not how 
little you can get off with. 

(12) Be sure, some time, to do more than you 
are able to do. You will never do all that you 
can do unless you sometimes do more than you 
can do. The very effort to do the impossible, 
if you have confidence in God, will bring to you 
new strength, and that makes the impossible pos- 
sible. God always gives strength when he gives 
a task, and he is sure to give a task greater than 
you are equal to till you put your hand to it and 
find his power energizing you. 

( 13 ) Seek to have a good reputation with your 
fellow Christians, not simply for the sake of 
the reputation, but in order to have a character 
worthy of the reputation and to have the oppor- 
tunity which the reputation will bring you. 

(14) Give the church a good reputation in the 
community. 

(15) Make your own church indispensable in 
the great work of the denomination. 

(16) Have some part, through your church, 
in every form of work which the denomination 
is undertaking in every one of its fields through- 
out the world. 

(17) Avail yourself of all the means of cul- 
ture that the church has devised, and devise others 
if you are able, for the church as well as for 
yourself. 

(18) Have an understanding with yourself 
that you will not only have faith in your fellow 
Christians, but enable them to have complete 

1 [129] 



You and Your Church 



faith in you. Faith compels faithfulness. Fidel- 
ity wins confidence. 

(19) Send to your Baptist headquarters and 
get suggestive forms of organization for your 
work. They have outlines of methods for work 
in all departments — Sunday school, men's work, 
women's work, young people's work, junior work. 
Their little pamphlets embody the wisdom of the 
experts. 



[130] 



II 



THE POWERS WITH WHICH YOU 
WORK 

1. Speech 

I begin with this because it is the most obvious 
and representative of all your powers. It is a 
distinctive of personality. If you were a cat or 
a dog or an owl or a mule, you would not need 
to " say something," but, as a human being, the 
first imperative is to speak when you are accosted 
by any one or commanded by the voice of duty. 

Your powers of speech serve the double pur- 
pose of expressing what is in you and imparting 
it to others. You may do that in other ways, but 
this is the superlative way. For that reason we 
are not surprised to find how wonderfully made 
are the organs of speech. The power to convert 
the vibrating air into words and give those words 
such variations in pitch and power and content of 
emotion as to express what your mind thinks, 
your heart feels, your conscience approves, and 
your will determines, is far more marvelous than 
any of the startling inventions of these scientific 
days. 

But that is only half of the wonder. The 
other half is that there are receiving-stations at- 
tuned to your speech which can take in your 

[131] 



You and Your Church 



words, vibrate to them, and reproduce them in 
souls like your own. It is somewhat like the 
telephone. You speak your words into the re- 
ceiver and that starts the air to vibrating. Those 
vibrations of air are converted into electrical 
vibrations and, flashing along the line with light- 
ning speed, are reconverted into air vibrations at 
the other end, and enter the ear of the listener in 
the original form into which you put what was 
in your mind, imparting the words with their 
pitch and power and feeling — a marvel indeed. 
Remember that in speech you aim to impart as 
well as express. 

In taking your part you have the double plea- 
sure of expressing and imparting, each a joy of a 
high order, especially the latter. 

In addition to the pleasure you give yourself 
there is the discipline through which you take 
yourself. It is a manifold discipline — discrim- 
inating in character, discarding what should 
never be expressed, much less imparted; select- 
ing what is suitable to be expressed at a given 
time and to a given person or group of persons; 
study of the needs of those to whom you would 
impart a truth or emotion or purpose ; controlling 
yourself in the doing of it; effacing yourself in 
the interest of others — a vital discipline in unself- 
ishness and effectiveness. All of this you do in 
the interest of unselfish service to your fellow 
men. 

I am not referring to public speaking especially, 
but to the use of the powers of speech, whether in 

[132] 



Powers With Which You Work 

public or in private. Perhaps you may be called 
on to be a preacher of the gospel, and in that case 
you will have to use this mighty power both pub- 
licly and privately. The early disciples " went 
everywhere, preaching the word," and the word 
for " preaching " is about the same as our word 
" talking," almost the same as " chatting." You 
are to achieve your part in that wonderful enter- 
prise which we have been considering, by what 
you say, though not in that way alone. 

An instrument capable of setting forth what 
is in you in such way that others can appropriate 
it and convert it into similar thought and emotion 
and purpose, is a power that can wreck as well 
as upbuild. It can awaken others to a sense of 
their needs and their possibilities, can energize 
and encourage and fraternize and humanize and 
divinize them ; yet, on the other hand, it can ex- 
press your very worst till it will turn on you to 
derange and even demonize you, while it will chill 
and cut and stab and poison and wreck those to 
whom you impart it. 

Therefore, train the powers with which you 
express yourself in order to make the best suc- 
cess of it in your power ; have the right thing to 
impart to those who need; know as perfectly as 
possible what their needs are, both specific and 
general. Remember what James tells us, in chap- 
ter three of his epistle, about the evils as well as 
the value of the tongue as the instrument for ex- 
pression and impartation. Also recall the words 
of Longfellow in his little poem about " The 

[133] 



You and Your Church 



Arrow and the Song." He shot an arrow into 
the air and years afterward found it unbroken 
in the heart of an oak, while the song, from 
beginning to end, he found again in the heart of 
a friend. Remember that, when you speak, what 
God approves is his own word, and that word 
cannot return to him void. (Isa. 55 : 11.) There 
is scarcely a blessing that cannot be floated to 
another on the current of consecrated conversa- 
tion, and when you see what your appeal and 
instruction and warning can do in restraining 
and educating and comforting and ennobling peo- 
ple, you will surely want to train every power 
of expression to its highest and use it to the ut- 
most. But back of the organs of speech is some- 
thing else. It is the power of 

2. Thought 

I said the organs of speech express what you 
think about. So you serve with thought-power. 
That is a source on which the speech draws. A 
tongue cannot run without something behind it. 
Unless you use your thought-power well, your 
tongue will lack certain important things to say 
that it ought to have at command. Think 
through your tasks, your great body of truths, 
think of your associates, your fellow men for 
whom you are to work. Train your judgments 
to work through your tongue. 

Here are three duties : to use your powers of 
thought; to train them, both by use and by ser- 
vice ; to understand all the tasks assigned to you. 

[134] 



Powers With Which You Work 

Know all the mission fields and as many names 
of the missionaries as you can, know the theory 
and history of modern missions. Know the prin- 
ciples of religious education, which are employed, 
or ought to be employed, in the Sunday school 
and in all the departments of church education. 
Know the body of truths that are vital and foun- 
dational in the teachings of Christianity. The 
intellect cannot be neglected by the Christian 
worker. In truth, as a teacher, you have the best 
opportunity to become really cultured that is 
possessed by anybody, other things being equal, 
when you consider your associates, your text- 
books, and the great truths involved. 

3. Heart-power 

John the Baptist said he was only a voice ; but 
voice is the instrument of mind and heart and 
of every other power of the man. You put heart 
into the work, for the tongue expresses what is in 
the heart, and it must be worthy to be expressed. 

First of all, you must control the production 
of feeling, both the character and volume of it, 
a very simple thing. You cannot command the 
proper feelings to come up from the depths of the 
soul in their suitable amounts; but you can feed 
the soul properly, and the right feelings will come 
by growth. You maintain a censorship over the 
heart. Read what Jesus says in Matthew 15 : 
18-20 about the output of the evil heart. 

Secondly, you must direct the current of the 
heart's output upon the work you are to do, 

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You and Your Church 



direct it through the proper channel of expres- 
sion. That will energize your ideas and words 
and make your words welcome and effective. 

4. Conscience 

Conscience is the power within you that ap- 
proves or disapproves of what you do. It must 
be ever active, but it must be instructed by the 
word of God and sensitized by the Spirit of God 
who dwells within you. There is nothing at all 
that you can ever do which the conscience will not 
approve or disapprove. As a driving-power, it 
makes any duty possible and agreeable. 

5. Will-power 

The thing that distinguishes man from the 
brute is personality, and the most distinctive thing 
about personality is the will. There is nothing 
that is impossible with God, and there is scarcely 
anything that God will not do for and through 
the one who uses his will in the service of God. 
The conversion of a soul is really the surrender 
of the will to do God's will and, instead of weak- 
ening it, that surrender brings into the soul the 
power of God's will. The art of willing is a cen- 
tral art and a well-instructed and persistent will 
is a great treasure in the work you are called to 
do. It will take you through all opposing ob- 
stacles and keep you ever at it. Every form of 
distraction will be in your way, and a holy pur- 
pose is the only thing that will keep you from 
falling or turning aside. 

[136] 



Powers With Which You Work 

6. Social Power 

Consecrate to the cause of your church your 
talent for friendship and social enjoyment and 
your talent for gratifying the social needs of 
others. If your social standing is command- 
ing, that is a gift of God to be used for your 
people. It belongs to humanity. The church 
needs it. 

7. Executive Power 

Whatever executive power you have is sorely 
needed, nothing else is more needed. It is re- 
quired in teaching your class and in handling 
them for the high ends you aim at, as a sort of 
army, or regiment in the church army. You will 
need it in leading the young people, or the mis- 
sion circle, or the committee of which you are 
chairman. If you are not gifted with executive 
ability, then appreciate it in others, and be a 
good follower of the leader in whose group you 
belong. 

8. Looks 

The countenance, the bearing, as well as the 
tones of voice, are a means of working. They 
add to or subtract from what you do. Looks 
and facial expression alone, without words or 
deeds, have a vital power. You may do a thing 
with a look that will render the deed impotent ; 
you may say a thing in a tone of voice that will 
deny what you say. 

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You and Your Church 



9. Hands 

Yours must be a head, hand, and heart religion. 
Jesus said, " Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do 
not the things that I say ? " Read the second 
chapter of James and hear what he says about 
professing great things while doing nothing. 
Then turn to i John 3 : 7 and read what is said 
about it. There is enough to keep many hands 
busy, and you must have a part in all the well- 
doing that is going on in the church, in the com- 
munity, in the world. Hand religion really in- 
cludes foot religion, includes all active service. 

10. Money 

Your money is an instrument of service, and a 
great big instrument it is. John Wesley had the 
right of it when he said that every man ought 
to make as much as possible, save as much as 
possible, give as much as possible. Here are 
some facts about your money that will help you 
to know its meaning in your Christian life : 

( 1 ) It all belongs to God, because you belong 
to him by creation and by your choice of Christ 
as Saviour whereby you are his by recreation in 
Christ; because the raw material of wealth was 
put into the ground for you; because you have 
been especially blessed by him in your use of those 
materials; because that which makes it all valu- 
able is due to the civilization which his providence 
has developed; because all your powers with 
which you have gained it are the gift of God and, 

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Powers With Which You Work 

as he owns you and the powers with which you 
work, and the material on which you work, you 
can never have anything at all which you can 
own absolutely. 

(2) It can all be used for the good of man, 
even the part you hold back for your own. sup- 
port and the part you use in continuing your busi- 
ness. You can make money in such a way as to 
be doing good with every cent of it, whether you 
are an employer or an employee. 

(3) You can turn that money into character, 
your own character, in the way you make it and 
in the way you use it after it is made; into the 
characters of those on whom you use it, both 
while making it and afterward. 

(4) It is the ripened fruit of your own powers 
at work and can be made to represent you in the 
church and in the mission field. 

(5) God wants you to recognize his owner- 
ship over it and over you by having a definite 
part of it put into his definite work. The part 
that seems right is one-tenth. Write to " Lay- 
man " of Chicago for literature giving a complete 
treatment of the tithing principle. 

This is the point : your money is an instrument 
of service, a powerful, convincing, effective in- 
strument. Learn its nature, its value, and the 
art of using it. 

11. Relationships 

Your relationships in the home, in the church, 
and in the community are all endowments of 

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power. You begin your work with those with 
whom you are connected in these ways. The 
ties that bind are the trails along which influence 
goes and efforts are made for the good of those 
with whom you are connected in those ways. 

12. Personality 

That is your own self, that entity in which 
are centered all those powers of which I have 
been speaking. You yourself are the important 
factor in your work. Emerson said, " What you 
are sounds so loud I cannot hear what you say." 
You are behind the words you say, the deeds you 
do, and you impart the subtle power of yourself 
to them. The nurture and the use of that self 
which uses all those powers is the paramount 
concern. Be what you should be, and you will 
almost surely say what you should say and do 
what you should do. The how of it is expressed 
in the words of the evangelistic song which says, 
" I'll be what you want me to be, dear Lord." 
Self -making and self -mastering are not easy, but 
there is a very definite way of doing it. 

We always take account of personal influence. 
You have it. Make it as big a thing as possible. 
Look again through all those several powers of 
which I have spoken, and be sure of three things : 
That you use each power thoroughly and pur- 
posely; that you use them in true harmony and 
balance, each supporting the other; that all the 
time you develop them for still greater use- 
fulness. 

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Powers With Which You Work 

All of these powers head up in your personal- 
ity, and they constitute your opportunity, or fit 
you to meet your opportunities. 

Remember also these two facts: 

First, that you can never be happy unless you 
follow this course. All who work with all their 
powers are happy. Not one is grouchy and dis- 
agreeable. There are workers who are grouchy, 
and some of them are quite useful; but they do 
not work with all their powers, and they are not 
nearly so useful as they could be. If you are not 
useful in the whole range of your talents and 
powers you will be uncomfortable within yourself 
and in your association with others. 

Secondly, that your work will not be in vain, 
cannot be in vain. Listen to Paul : " Wherefore, 
my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmovable, 
always abounding in the work of the Lord, foras- 
much as ye know that your labor is not in vain 
in the Lord" (i Cor. 15 : 58). As he also 
wrote to a young minister, so he says to you, 
'Take heed unto thyself " (1 Tim. 4 : 16). 



[141] 



Ill 

THE POWER FROM ABOVE 

You accomplish your work in the making of 
character, your own and that of others, by the 
use of the powers with which God has endowed 
you by nature and by grace, but those powers are 
unequal to the stupendous achievement. You 
have to secure an added power that will vitalize 
and energize and fertilize them. There is an 
element in the perfected human character which 
no unaided human powers are competent to place 
there or to develop it after it has been placed 
there. 

1. That Power Has Its Source in God the Father 

That is true because all power came originally 
from him. We may distinguish four different 
kinds of power. One is physical. We appreciate 
that; we need it; it is the instrument of great 
deeds. Another is psychical, something that re- 
sides in the spirit and shows itself in thought and 
emotion and all the other ways in which your 
spirit exhibits itself. Those powers are necessary 
in God's service. A third power is that of the 
personality, and we know how important that is. 
A fourth power comes directly from God into 
the heart which reverences and trusts and obeys 

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The Power from Above 



him. That is the power I am talking about just 
now. 

You must have that in a personal way. Paul 
tells the Philippians, " work out your own salva- 
tion," because it has already been worked, and it 
is God " who worketh in you both to will and to 
work, for his good pleasure" (Phil. 2 : 12, 13). 
He did this for his pleasure, and they were to do 
it for the same reason. All your worth comes 
from that source, and all your work is made pos- 
sible by power from him. Whatever you are try- 
ing to do will fail at some vital point, even 
though you make use of all your noblest powers, 
unless you get something from God which is 
missing in your natural make-up and is required 
in the product you are trying to turn out. " My 
God shall supply every need of yours" (Phil. 
4: 19). "We are God's fellow workers" 
(1 Cor. 3: 9). 

2. It is Made Possible to Us Through Jesus Our 
Saviour 

It is brought to us by him. Here are several 
things he does : First, he reveals God to you and 
to those whom you are helping to find him and 
work for him. To reveal means to uncover. 
You see God in him. Secondly, he brings you 
and God together in peace by making an atone- 
ment for your sins and making you love God. 
Thirdly, he makes you a coworker with God. 
Do you try to bring some one to God ? He says, 
"'No man cometh unto the Father, but by me" 

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You and Your Church 



(John 14: 6). Do you wish to know the Father 
and to teach men what he is ? " No man know- 
eth the Father, save the Son and he to whomso- 
ever the Son willeth to reveal him.' , 

In all this work of making yourself a good 
Christian and helping others to do the same, you 
are getting power from the Father through the 
Son. That is what he did in himself, what he 
did and is doing in you, what he tells you to do, 
shows you how to do, secures for you the power 
to do ; as Paul said, "I can do all things through 
Christ who strengthened me." He gives you the 
motive: "The love of Christ constraineth us." 
You have a vital connection with God by Christ's 
life, as John said, " In him was life, and the life 
was the light of men " (John 1:4). Paul says, 
" It is no longer I, but Christ that liveth in me, 
and that life which I now live in the flesh, I live 
by faith which is in the Son of God, who loved 
me and gave himself up for me" (Gal. 2 : 20). 
Know Christ, and you will know God. Keep in 
touch with him, and the sacred current will flow 
into your life. 

3. Christ is Mediated to You by the Holy Spirit 

In the same way you will bring others to 
Christ and strengthen them in Christ. 

When Jesus was leaving he said, " Ye shall 
receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come 
upon you." 

(1) It is that Spirit who will awaken those 
whom you desire to bring to Christ, to a sense of 

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The Power from Above 



their need. Jesus told in advance that when the 
Spirit came, he would convict the world of its 
needs. (John 16 : 8-n.) 

(2) It is the Spirit who will teach you the 
meaning of truth and its use. (John 16 : 12-15.) 

(3) He helps our infirmities in several ways, 
as Paul tells the Romans (Rom. 8 : 26) ; he leads 
us (Rom. 8 : 14), becomes the consciousness of 
our childship to the Father (Rom. 8 : 15-17), 
guides and empowers us to pray (Rom. 8 : 26, 
2j), enables us to know that all things work to- 
gether for our good. (Rom. 8 : 28.) 

(4) He is the author of the whole Christian 
character, its graces being his fruits. (Gal. 5 : 
22-24. ) 

The Spirit does his work with you and through 
you, but works from within you. Jesus said he 
would send the Spirit, and then called him by 
the name Paraklete in Greek, which means " one 
called to the side of another to help." The Spirit 
was called to our side by our needs, called to take 
the place of the departing Christ, but he does 
not stay at our side: he takes his place within, 
and from that point of vantage does the many 
things I have spoken of and many others. " He 
shall be in you," said Jesus. " Know ye not that 
ye are the temple of the Holy Spirit, and that 
the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? " asks Paul in 
First Corinthians 3 : 16. 

The Spirit directed Philip to the Ethiopian 
and caught him away after that work was done. 
(Acts 8 : 29-40.) So he will help you in your 

k [ 145 ] 



You and Your Church 



work. You need his power and wisdom and 
love. Seek him. Depend on him. Yield to him. 
He is always within you, even when you are 
dull and indifferent and self-willed; always there, 
but often grieved (Eph. 4 .'30), his power often 
quenched (1 Thess. 5 : 19), but always at work 
in you, and always seeking to work through you. 



[146] 



IV 

HOW TO GET THAT POWER 

1. Listening to God 

There are three ways of doing that: in re- 
ceiving what Jesus says to you; in responding 
to the Spirit's promptings within you ; in getting 
the teachings of the Bible. I am speaking espe- 
cially of the latter, though that includes what 
Jesus says to you as well as what it says about 
him and about God and about you. 

The Bible is the story of the revelation of God 
in Christ, beginning with the creation of the race, 
its sin, and the promise of a Redeemer, tracing 
the history of the arrangements God made in get- 
ting the world ready for Christ, then giving an 
authentic and authoritative account of his life 
and his teachings and his plans. 

Your success in being a Christian in yourself 
and a good " Christian among Christians " will 
be in exact proportion to your success in learning 
the Bible and making use of it. No other book 
can take its place, for it is the only book that has 
what you are compelled to have in your blessed 
business. Here are some of the considera- 
tions : 

( i ) It is the only book that tells the story of 
Jesus, your only Saviour and Teacher and King. 

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You and Your Church 



(2) It tells that story accurately, adequately, 
authoritatively, for it tells it in human language, 
out of human experience, and makes an ex- 
hibit of all divine resources to meet all human 
needs. 

(3) It is the source-book of all the other books 
that are worth while, the source of their ideas, or 
characters, or style, or morals. 

(4) It is the source-book of all the great char- 
acters since that time. 

(5) It is the source-book of the great laws 
that are operative in the world, for the laws of 
America and Canada are based on the English 
Common Law, the English law on the Code of 
Justinian, and Justinian on Moses, while the 
teachings and spirit of Jesus have softened it all 
for us. 

(6) It is the source-book of our civilization, 
the only civilization that has not been self -de- 
structive, a civilization that can endure only by 
being controlled by this book. 

(7) It is essential to a healthy, happy, and 
victorious life. It has been compared to light, 
for it leads you to the fountain of light, which is 
Jesus. It has been compared to food, " sweeter 
also than honey and the honey-comb.' ' It has 
been compared to the sword, " the sword of the 
Spirit" (Eph. 6 : 17; Heb. 4 : 12, 13). 

(8) It is the only book in which you can find 
original information on certain vital matters. 
One of those matters is the origin of the world 
and of the race. Here is the account of it which 



[148] 



How to Get That Power 



science is seeking. Another matter is that of 
the origin of sin. Still another is the fact of 
immortality. There are a good many reasons 
why we believe we shall live on after the experi- 
ence of death, but the Bible is at hand with defi- 
nite and satisfying information. There is. the 
matter of the resurrection. Nature has hints, but 
no proof of it. Some lofty souls have dreamed 
of such a destiny for soul and body, but the Bible 
tells about it and tells it in a way to satisfy every 
normal question of the human mind. 

Yes, your success in being a good Christian will 
be in the degree in which you make a conquest 
of the Bible as " the man of your counsel," the 
guide of your life. And it will enable you to do 
that for the simple reason that it will connect 
you up with the source of the power which you 
must have, the power that originates in God the 
Father, flows out to us through Jesus, and is 
vitalized in the soul by the Holy Spirit, the One 
who quickened us when we were " dead in tres- 
passes and in sin " (Eph. 2:1). 

Here are four things it will give you: (a) 
Knowledge, which is the more immediate and ob- 
jective result of reading and studying it. (b) In- 
sight, for it is "living, and active, and sharper 
than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to 
the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints 
and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts 
and intents of the heart. And there is no creature 
that is not manifest in his sight; but all things 
are naked and laid open before the eyes of him 

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You and Your Church 



with whom we have to do " (Heb. 4 : 12, 13). 
(c) Devotion. That means inspiration and energy 
and enthusiasm and never-wearying fidelity, (d) 
Skill, that is, tact. Tactus is the Latin word for 
touch. You have a sense of physical touch which 
does two things for you. It discloses what a 
given substance is — even though your eyes be 
shut — and it suggests how you are to deal with 
it. You touch a rose or a piece of iron with 
closed eyes, and that sense of touch will do those 
two things for you. You will never try to handle 
the iron as if it were a rose. So your spirit 
touches people, and that sense of touch serves 
you in those two ways. You handle each person 
in a different way, and Jesus gives you that touch 
through the blessed book. That skill implies love 
and sympathy and patience — the Bible disciplines 
you in that manifold grace. You learn to know 
what you need and what others need; you learn 
how to apply the teachings of the Bible to that 
need. The one who learns that art becomes the 
most useful person in the community. You will 
never know what your work is or how to do it or 
have the power or even the inclination to do it 
unless you know the word. 

There are six encouragements right here. One 
is that the Bible is the most knowable book there 
is. The most learned person in all the world 
will find something new in the Bible every time 
he goes over the pages he has been reading since 
childhood, and the most ignorant person in the 
whole community will find something he can take 

[150] 



How to Get That Power 



hold of and live by. Another is that one bit of 
knowledge always leads to more. And another is 
that it grows more and more fascinating as you 
learn it; its yoke is easy; its burden, light. 
Again, it has something for you, whatever the 
crying needs of your own life or the needs of 
those you serve as a Christian. Fifthly, it dis- 
closes its truths in the degree in which you yield 
yourself to its sway. Jesus said that when he told 
the people, "If any man willeth to do his will [of 
my Father who is in heaven], he shall know of 
the teaching" (John 7 : 17). You learn by do- 
ing. That's true in all learning, and especially 
true here. Sixthly, if you will apply the word 
faithfully to yourself, you will be able to apply it 
helpfully to others. It is trustworthy. Commit 
yourself to it. 

The question of how to possess yourself of the 
Bible and its wonderful teachings is a practical 
one. You need, first, equipment. That means 
a well-printed copy, preferably in the American 
Revised edition, with maps, a Bible dictionary, 
and index, all in the same cover, or in separate 
volumes. One book may contain most of this. 
Next, you need a method of using it. That 
method will contain a time element, so that you 
will be regular in your study. It will involve an 
objective, meeting special needs in yourself and 
in others. Method is essential. You will have 
to create the method best adapted to your own 
case, using those two elements of time and an 
objective. 

[1511 



You and Your Church 



2. Talking to God 

By that I mean prayer. Reading the Scrip- 
tures — listening to God — and prayer — talking to 
God — will put you in such contact with the 
source of power that you will never lack any- 
thing. 

You have to pray anyhow, because you are a 
child of God and you cannot help talking to your 
Father. Prayer is the very breath of the new 
life in Christ. You would be utterly abnormal 
if you did not want to speak to your Father. 
No normal child wants to keep always utterly 
dumb before its father. 

God wants you to talk to him, else he would 
be an unnatural Father. He enjoys having you 
talk to him. Of course he does. He wants to 
do many things for you which he would be utterly 
unable to do if you did not pray. You also, as a 
Christian, desire to be what it is impossible for 
you to become without prayer, and you want to 
do many things which you cannot do unless you 
pray. 

So you see that your vigor, your enjoyment, 
your growth, your success in work all require that 
you pray. 

( i ) What is Prayer? 

When I say prayer I mean one or all of four 
things. 

a. Prayer means association with God, fellow- 
ship with him, being conscious of his controlling, 
if not always comfortable, presence. We may 

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How to Get That Power 



say simply communion with God, whatever you 
may or may not ask of him or say to him. You 
associate with him because of fellowship with 
him ; that fellowship with him is due to the rela- 
tionships that exist between you two. He made 
man in his image, and that broken image is re- 
stored by Christ. You are reborn into his family. 
You are akin to him. There is something like 
him in you. The restoration of that old likeness 
was begun when you were reborn into the image 
of his sinless and eternal Son, Jesus, your Sa- 
viour and Elder Brother, the typical member of 
the family. It is being perfected as you grow like 
Christ. That kinship draws you to God and you 
enjoy being with him. He wants that form of 
prayer which we call " conscious communion " 
with him, to be habitual. Perhaps that is what 
Paul meant when he said, " Pray without ceas- 
ing" (i Thess. 5 : 17) — be ever in an attitude 
of such fellowship with the Father that it would 
be entirely easy to utter your supplication any 
minute — be always in the spirit of prayer. God 
wants you to be aware of him every minute, 
conscious of his presence, for he is actually 
always with you. Then why not be aware of 
that presence? 

b. Prayer means the utterance of your praise 
and thanks for what he has done for you and 
for what he is, and always has been, to you. He 
has already done so much more than you could 
ever ask him for, that the volume of your praise 
should be larger than the volume of your peti- 

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You and Your Church 



tions. It is hard for you to have the fellow- 
ship with him without spending most of your 
thought on being grateful. You will be thank- 
ing him most of the time. The word " thank " 
and the word " think " are the same except for 
one letter. They are actually from the same root 
word, and the meaning is that the normal process 
of thinking is one of thanking God for what he 
has done and for what he is. The words " praise " 
and " appraise " and " prize " and " price " and 
" precious " have a common origin. You ap- 
praise God's value in praising him, tell how pre- 
cious he is, show how you prize him, set a super- 
lative price on him. The word " worship " is a 
contraction of the word " worthship." In your 
worship you declare God's worth in so far as a 
human being can declare the infinite. 

c. Prayer is petition for what you need, or 
think you need: for wisdom (James I : 5-8); 
for forgiveness (1 John 1:9; Isa. 55 : 7) ; for 
strength for your work and every needed blessing 
(Ps. 37 : 4). You will need to ask many things 
for yourself. (1 John 5 : 14, 15.) The teachings 
of the Scriptures on the subject are full and 
stimulating. Search out its teachings for your- 
self. 

d. Prayer will often be intercession. That 
word " intercession " means walking between. 
You are farther along, at least in some things, 
than a certain other person, walking on ahead of 
him. Then walk in between that person and 
God and get something from God for him that he 

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How to Get That Power 



may not know how to get for himself or may 
need, over and above what he himself is able to 
get. He will need, at the least, the love which 
you put into your petition for him. There is a 
social value in praying for others. We are tied 
up in the bundle of life with others, and we must 
make their interest our own when we pray. 

You will be able to get strength and wisdom 
for some of your tasks only through prayer, and 
you will be able to secure blessings for others 
through prayer, blessings that they will go with- 
out all their lives unless you pray for them. 

Read the farewell interview of Samuel with 
the people as he turned them over to the king 
whom they were determined to have. When, in 
emotional contrition, they asked him to pray for 
them, his response was one of the noblest words 
ever uttered : " Far be it from me that I should 
sin against Jehovah in ceasing to pray for you " 
(i Sam. 12 : 23). Especially do I recommend 
the team-work praying which Jesus invites us to 
do in Matthew 18 : 19: "If two of you shall 
agree on earth as touching anything that they 
shall ask, it shall be done for them by my Father 
who is in heaven." And I ask if you do not 
think you sin against any one who needs your 
prayers, when you fail, or cease, to pray for that 
one. If you can secure vitally needed blessings 
through prayer, it is your sin not to pray; if 
you can meet some urgent need of others by 
praying for them, surely you will not do so 
wrong a thing as not to pray. 

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You and Your Church 



(2) Some Suggestions About How to Pray. 

a. You are to pray with every power of body 
and soul, with every power you have. 

b. Your praying should take account of every 
interest of yours, for God is interested in every- 
thing that is of interest or importance to you. 
Cultivate the habit of talking to God about every- 
thing and leaving with him what sort of an- 
swer to give, yes or no, and, if yes, what it 
shall be, when he will give it, and how he will 
do it. 

c. Let your praying take account of everything 
of importance to others. You should spend more 
time in talking to God about others than about 
your own personal interests, for there are so 
many more of them. 

d. Let your praying take account of all of God, 
not of his love alone, but of his power; not of his 
power alone, but of his perfect knowledge, for 
he knows all things ; not of his knowledge alone, 
but of his wisdom, for he knows exactly what is 
best; not of his wisdom alone, but of his omni- 
presence as well, for he can deliver the answer to 
your prayers over in China as well as in your 
home; not of his omnipotence alone, but of his 
tender interest in you. 

e. Let your praying take account of all God's 
interests. He is interested in many people and in 
many different kinds of enterprises. He stored 
the physical world with many treasures, and he 
is interested in seeing us discover and use them. 
He is at work among the stars, and you can study 

[156] 



How to Get That Power 



them in that light, rejoicing in the fact that they 
belong to your Father and that he is engaged in 
stupendous enterprises. His is the vast enterprise 
of missions over the world. 

f. Let the praying be constant, " without ceas- 
ing." That means two things, that you are al- 
ways in the attitude of prayer and that, when you 
have undertaken a prayer enterprise, you keep it 
up till the answer comes, even if it takes a 
half century. Pray it through, talk it out with 
God. 

(3) As to the Method, or Habit, of Prayer. 

a. Make the resolution, and keep it active in 
the mind, that yon will get all out of praying 
that can be gotten out of it, that you will secure 
whatever God can do for you and for your work 
in behalf of others. 

b. Make a special study of all the teachings 
of the Bible about praying. You might spend 
a season on that subject. Then about once a 
year study the subject afresh. 

c. Read the stories of the prayer-life of emi- 
nent servants of God and, in the reading of biog- 
raphy, note the illustrations of the power of 
prayer in men's lives. Take the cases of Moody, 
Gen. Chinese Gordon, and General Havelock as 
instances. 

d. Have regular times for prayer in which you 
can be absolutely alone. Jesus was wise in say- 
ing, " Shut the door " when you enter your closet 
for your private, personal prayer. The reason 
is that, if you are aware of the fact that your 

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door is unlocked, you will have the consciousness 
that you might be interrupted at any minute and, 
therefore, your mind will be divided, you cannot 
concentrate your thoughts in prayer. It is strictly 
necessary to be alone with God at times, even 
at regular times. Moses was alone with God 
when the call and the glory came to him at the 
burning bush. Jacob was alone with God when 
he had that vision which ultimately changed his 
life. Isaiah and God were shut up together when 
the prophet saw himself and humanity and God 
in a new light. Paul was caught up into the 
third heaven, and he and God seemed to be the 
only ones in existence. John on the Island of 
Patmos saw that panorama of apocalyptic glory 
when no one was near but God. You must be 
alone with God, in the consciousness that you are 
face to face with him. 

e. Have special seasons of prayer. Appoint a 
day of worship for yourself. Take a holiday for 
prayer and take your prayer-list with you. Re- 
member the whole church, the officers, the vari- 
ous groups, the missionaries, the general workers 
of the denomination and of all Christian bodies, 
the rulers of the land, the interests of the com- 
munity. (Matt. 5 . 44; Eph. 6 : 18-20; 1 Tim. 
2 : 1-3.) Keep a list of the unconverted of the 
congregation and those belonging to the families 
of the church. Have the names and needs of 
the afflicted ever in your mind. Let your praying 
be concrete, specific, personal. Take heed to your 
prayer-life. Talk much with God. 

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How to Get That Power 



3. Working with God 

This is a third way of securing the power you 
must get from God — working with him. Of 
course, if you do anything at all that is right, you 
work with God, because you work with the mate- 
rial which he has created and placed in the soil, 
or under the soil, or in the air, or in the sun 
and moon and stars ; or you utilize the laws which 
he has made, like the law of cause and effect, the 
law of gravity, the law of the seasons, etc.; or 
you use those powers of your own which are his 
gift, the powers of body and mind and personal- 
ity; or you work with other human beings who 
are made by him. 

You work much with him unconsciously. But 
if you should do all that I have been speaking 
of consciously, aware of the Source of all, de- 
lighting in your Colaborer, it would take on a 
new interest and value to you and its effect on 
others would be greater. But there are things 
that you cannot do at all unless you work with 
him consciously. You accomplish things you 
would never think of undertaking at all except 
that you know he and you are working at that 
task — bringing people to their Saviour, comfort- 
ing the troubled, discipling the souls of people, 
and perfecting them in Christ. You take his Son 
into your life. His Spirit transforms you. His 
word enlightens you as you seek to do his will. 
The common work he and you do establishes 
contacts between you. You respond to him and 

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You and Your Church 



receive his power. You obey him and get the 
shock of his will. You associate with him in 
work, and that brings you the power of his 
thought and heart. 

Some Suggestions 

i. Make every task you do, even the most 
material, a conscious participation with him in 
some purpose of his, as Paul says, " Whether, 
therefore, ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, 
do all to the glory of God/' There is nothing 
on earth you may do in any calling that is not a 
work of partnership with God. Make that fact a 
part of your consciousness and enjoy it to the 
full. 

2. As he does nothing without calling us into 
partnership with him, get as deep into his work 
as he will allow you to go. It is simply glorious. 
" We are laborers together with God " in every- 
thing that he does for men. Working with his 
wisdom and love and strength you become en- 
dowed with them. 



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SOME THINGS THAT HELP 

1. The Church 

There is first of all the help that comes from 
the church as a whole. That body of people with 
their enterprises and virtues reenforces you at 
every point. The consciousness of being a part 
of it, a vital part at that, exhilarates, warms, in- 
tensifies, guides you. It is as if you were the 
inlet of a great ocean whose tides sweep through 
you. 

Here are three things you must by all means 
do, with conscience and high purpose and the 
greatest possible intelligence: 

(i) Attend the meetings of the church — all of 
them. If there is one of them that you must 
neglect, let it be the one that can most easily 
spare you. But do not select one for neglect, un- 
less it is simply imperative. There are all sorts 
of reasons, given by a great many different men, 
for attending church, from men like Roosevelt, 
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Gladstone, and — well, 
the list is too long to try to give. 

You can see some of those reasons instantly 
and can feel them all as soon as they are men- 
tioned. They appeal to your reason, to your 
heart's love, to your higher self-interest, to your 

l [ 161 ] 



You and Your Church 



fidelity, to your patriotism, to your community 
interest, to your ambition to become the best 
person you can, to your honor, to your comrade- 
ship with your fellow Christians. 

You get truths that you need. 

You get fervor and motive for your tasks. 

You get pleasure that you cannot get anywhere 
else. 

You get protection against your perils, seen 
and unseen. 

You get the love of people. 

You get the help of people. 

You get opportunities for work. 

You find your work. 

But, as much as you get, you give still more, 
and that is the better thing of the two. 

You give cheer to those who are there. 

You cheer the preacher. 

You find some one, now and then, who would 
have been desolate all his life, but for what you 
said or offered him there. 

You give your church a rating in the com- 
munity by attending. 

You prove to all that there is such a thing as 
fidelity, and that is needed in the community. 

You help some one else to find his work. 

You not only escape that miserable feeling that 
you have not been square with the people with 
whom you have a standing engagement to go to 
church, but you encourage all the other members 
to be square and you help. When you go, sit with 
members of your own family. If there are chil- 

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Some Things That Help 



dren with you, keep them in the pew with you, for 
there is the greatest sort of need of teaching them 
to worship together both as a family and as part 
of the group which constitutes the church. If 
the younger members of the family seat them- 
selves in church according to their caprices or 
their changing comradeships, they fail to grow 
into the right habits of social worship and private 
worship. You cannot pray alone unless you 
sometimes pray with others, nor can you pray 
well in a social meeting unless you can pray 
alone. There is a multitudinous element in us 
that requires that we meet in the congregation 
with others of like mind, and there the younger 
members of the family must learn reverence and 
the expression of it. 

(2) Not only attend the church, but support 
it, support it with an intelligent and true con- 
science, with system and with good cheer, giving, 
as it may need your support, according to your 
ability. The support of the church is investing 
rather than giving; it is a way of securing to 
yourself and to your kindred the greatest of all 
values. In another chapter I have spoken of the 
moral value and the right use of money. 

(3) Bear your own personal part in the wor- 
ship at the meetings of the church. Sing in the 
choir if you have that sort of talent. Teach or 
act as an officer in the Sunday school, if you are 
fitted for it and are asked to do so. Lead in 
prayer or even lead a meeting when it is suitable. 
Fit yourself for any or all of these duties. 

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You and Your Church 



The midweek meeting for prayer has been 
rightly called the thermometer of the church. 
You cannot be so gifted by nature or so developed 
in your Christian character that you will not 
need the help you can gain at the prayer-meeting. 
You can never live among a people who will be 
so perfect as not to need the help that you can 
give them by going to the prayer-meeting. There 
you try out the promises of God; you learn the 
deepest lessons of all ; you find the deepest needs 
disclosed ; you come into touch with people whom 
you can help in special ways — burdened, anxious, 
discouraged, undisciplined, willing, helpful peo- 
ple. Your own needs will disclose themselves at 
the prayer-meeting as at no other meeting, and 
you will find help coming to you. 

2. The Denomination 

You get help from the whole body of the 
church through your consciousness of being a 
vital part of it; but you must cultivate the deep 
consciousness of being a part of the great denom- 
ination which has achieved such a glorious task 
and is now engaged in such glorious world-wide 
enterprises. " I am a part of that body," you 
say to yourself, and you feel glad and grateful 
and hopeful and purposeful. 

Inform yourself about all the doings of the 
denomination, its enterprises and problems. Do 
that by reading the denominational papers, by 
becoming acquainted with just as many of the 
general and local leaders as you can, and by at- 

[164] 



Some Things That Help 



tending the larger meetings. Be sure to attend 
the annual sessions of the Association to which 
your church belongs. Go to the State or Province 
meeting as often as possible. Make it a point to 
attend the general convention. 

3. Friends 

You get special help from your more intimate, 
personal friends. Some of them are in your home 
church. They encourage you by their example. 
They help you to see the things you have in com- 
mon. That enriches you. They join with you 
in your common tasks, pass through campaigns 
with you for the extension of Christ's kingdom, 
and contribute to your own development. You 
work and plan and purpose and pray and worship 
and war together till you become almost essential 
to each other's happiness. I have seen old com- 
rades in the war for righteousness, who could 
scarcely endure a day when they did not see 
each other. One of the most beautiful sights in 
the church is that of such friendships. And they 
are common. 

Find friends in the church. They will illus- 
trate life for you. They will do team-work with 
you. They will give you an opportunity to serve 
them. They will show you how not to do. They 
will adorn and honor you. 

4. Literature 

( i ) The fugitive literature, periodicals. There 
are at least three papers you should read every 

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You and Your Church 



week. One is the denominational paper which 
covers your territory. That will keep you in- 
formed on what the denomination is doing. It 
is the best assistant pastor any church can have. 
If the paper costs you two dollars and fifty cents 
a year, that is only five cents a week. If you 
really cannot afford it, then go in with some one 
else or several others and take it in partnership. 
It would be difficult properly to value the work 
done by those papers for the denomination and 
for the general cause of Christ. Another is the 
mission paper. Still another is the Sunday school 
paper which not only gives expositions of the les- 
sons, week by week, but discusses methods of 
work in detail and guides you in your study and 
in Sunday school work. The daily paper may be 
read in a distinctly Christian way with important 
results in your thought and usefulness. 

(2) The more permanent literature, books. It 
is literally true that " of the making of books 
there is no end." You can get many of the books 
of a general character at the public library. I 
would often buy a good book of permanent value 
to you as a Christian and as a church-member, a 
book on the Bible, a book on some phase of the 
Sunday school enterprise, a book on missions, a 
book of biography, the life of some great man 
or woman who has wrought for God and human- 
ity. Accumulate a worker's library. There are 
so many books on all these subjects that a wise 
selection is not difficult to make. Look over the 
list at the bookstore. Confer with your pastor. 



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Some Things That Help 



Read the reviews in the papers. Consult with 
some expert. There is always one book that is 
the best of all. Get that one. Get the best one on 
each line of study. Another suggestion : Borrow 
books and read them, but be sure to return them. 
Still another suggestion: Lend them as fast as 
you get them read, and keep them going. . 

5. The Sabbath 

The Sabbath is God's answer to a fundamental 
need of all men of every nation for one day in 
seven for rest and opportunity to nurture the 
higher life and to render the higher service to 
each other. Jesus endorsed and restored it after 
it had been terribly misused and also suffered 
from disuse. The civil Sabbath is on the same 
day and is necessary. The law of rest for all is 
necessary in order to have a day of rest for each 
one. You must rest that day from habitual toil 
unless your toil is some work of mercy or of 
necessity as provided for by God and by the laws 
of the land. And you must use the day as one 
of rare opportunity. There are two shameless 
abuses of the day, one from the pursuit of money- 
getting and the other from the pursuit of plea- 
sure. All sorts of perils threaten the very exis- 
tence of the day. When it goes, homes will go, 
governments will go, unselfishness will pass away 
from the world. The Sabbath is an instrument 
with which you work. Keep it sacredly. Use it 
for the highest purposes of worship and religious 
ministry. 

[167] 



VI 

DIFFICULTIES AND ENCOURAGEMENTS 

Of course, there are difficulties in the way of 
your complete success. Your work would not be 
interesting or worth while if it was easy. 

1. Difficulties 

There are three classes of difficulties: Some 
you find within yourself. You have limitations, 
and you are keenly aware of them ; in truth, the 
uncomfortable fact is that you seem to become 
more keenly aware of them all the time: limita- 
tions on your talents, or on your culture, or on 
your will-power, or on your whole-heartedness, 
or on the nobility of your ideals and thoughts 
and ways. It may also be a limitation on your 
reputation and standing, due to some sin or 
blunder of yours of which you may, or may not, 
be aware. It may be some natural fault of yours 
which repels people or distresses them, a fault 
like envy, or jealousy, or avarice, or impulsive 
speech, or violent temper, or intolerance, or gos- 
sip, or deceit — some natural tendency which you 
have not learned how to subdue or exterminate. 
It may be worse, or it may be the milder fault of 
shyness, or morbidness, or tactlessness, if that 
can be called a mild fault. There are so many 

[168] 



Difficulties and Encouragements 

difficulties within you. Two things should en- 
courage you. One is that there is a way of cur- 
ing them, and Christ has the cure in his posses- 
sion. Get into right accord with him, and you 
are safe. Another encouragement is that, when 
people see that you are fighting a battle with 
yourself and doing it in the right spirit, they will 
applaud you and trust you. They will appreciate 
you all the more for your nobility in making the 
fight. Your success will be all the more dis- 
tinguished for the difficulties overcome. If you 
have done wrong, retract it and repair the wrong. 
That will advance you in the esteem of all who 
know about it. If your standing has been poor, 
it will be all the better for your effort to regain 
your right place. 

Another group of difficulties is found in the 
people in whose interest you work and in those 
who work with you. All of them have faults, 
possibly as bad as yours, possibly worse. Re- 
member two facts — that God has done something 
for you and therefore he can do much for them 
and through them ; also that it takes time to get 
results. So master yourself in the name and by 
the power of Christ, and work on. 

Another set of difficulties is in the circum- 
stances in which you work. The ethical and so- 
cial habits of the community may be against you. 
Perhaps the people are pleasure-mad or society- 
mad or money-mad. There may be marked skep- 
ticism or irreligion in the life of the people. 
Estrangements and enmities may divide the com- 

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You and Your Church 



munity, or some of the families of the commu- 
nity, or even members of the same families. The 
level of culture may be low, interest in the things 
of the spirit subordinated to interest in the things 
of the letter or of the flesh. The number of 
Christians may be so small compared with the 
rest of the population as to make you and your 
associates feel lonely and insufficient. The social 
or financial importance of the people outside the 
churches, or their culture, or their natural traits 
may seem to put you and the other Christians at 
a disadvantage. It may even be possible that you 
are poorly adjusted in some one element of your 
relational life and you feel that it is a fatal handi- 
cap. Whether you have these peculiar difficul- 
ties or not, you have the sinful nature that is 
common to all men to contend with and to 
overcome. 

2. Encouragements 

// God saved you and your associates in work, 
he surely ought to be able to accomplish his pur- 
pose for those in whom you are interested. They 
may not be less promising than " some of you." 
Remember how Paul recounted the awful vices 
of the people at Corinth and then said, "And 
such were some of you, but ye are washed," etc. 
Cheer up. 

Again, remember that your Christian character 
is the most powerful human means which God 
uses at all. Live the life well, and you will make 
an impression on your environment, however ob- 

[170] 



Difficulties and Encouragements 

stinate and obdurate. Even though in your rela- 
tional life there be adverse elements, they cannot 
withstand you and Christ combined, especially 
when the Spirit of God dwells within you, in- 
forming you, energizing you, directing you, build- 
ing you up in Christ. If you are Christlike, your 
character will flow along the channels of. your 
connection with people in the domestic, religious, 
social, business, educational relations in which 
you live. 

Also, remember that this enterprise of yours 
as a Christian is God's. It was his before you 
made it yours. He initiated it. He first saw the 
goal you are driving for, away off yonder. It is 
his purpose you are carrying out. The plan on 
which you work is his plan. The power with 
which you work comes from him. His presence 
is assured and is a fact every minute you are at 
work in thought or ideal or act. His partnership 
is what gives coherence and continuity and stabil- 
ity to both you and your work. " We are God's 
fellow laborers," says Paul to the Corinthians. 
Said Jesus in the book of Revelation to John, 
" He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit 
down with me in my throne, as I also overcame 
and sat down with my Father in his throne.'' 
" Your labor is not in vain in the Lord." Others 
will help you to succeed, " finish what you begin 
and what you fail of win," as the lines have it. 
" Wherefore, . . let us lay aside every weight, . . 
and let us run with patience the race that is set 
before us, looking unto Jesus." 

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You and Your Church 



This is your deepest and dearest thought: 

I ask no heaven till earth be thine, 

No glory crown while work of mine 

Remaineth here. 

When earth shall shine among the stars, 

Her sins wiped out, her captives free, 

Her voice a music unto thee, 

For crown new work give thou to me; 

Lord, here am I. 



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